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HARVARD COLLEGE 
LIBRARY 




BOUGHT WITH 

MONEY RECEIVED FROM 

LIBRARY FUSES 



r 



&,P-- vf^r c\ I 




Publications 



OF THE 



American Sociological Society 



General Topic: 
The Family 



AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

Organized at Baltimore, December, 1905 



OFFICERS FOR THE YEAR 1909 

President: William G. Sumner, Yale University 
Vice-Presidents: Franklin H. Giddings, Columbia University 

Albion W. Small, The University of Chicago 
Secretary and Treasurer: C. W. A. Veditz, George Washington University, 

Washington, D. C. 

Executive Committee, in addition to the above officers: 
Frank W. Black mar. University of Kansas 
Charles Hb Cooley, University of Michigan 
Charles A. Ellwood, University of Missouri 
Graham Taylor, Chicago Commons 
Lester F. Ward, Brown University 
U. G. Weatherly, University of Indiana 
D. Colin Wells, Dartn^outh University 

Communications regarding membership, meetings, and the general affairs 
of the Society should be addressed to the Secretary at Washington, IXC, care 
of the George Washington University. Orders for publications should be 
addressed to the University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 111., and 1^6 Fifth 
Avenue, New York City. 



NATURE AND PURPOSES OF THE SOCIETY 

The American Sociological Society was organized at Baltimore in 1905 at 
conferences which were held there in conjunction with the annual meetings of 
the American Economic Association, the American Historical Associatiofi> and 
the American Political Science Association. Among those who atended these 
Conferences' there was an almost unanimous opinion that the interests of sodolo- 
grists were sufficiently important and sufficiently distinct to warrant the creation 
of a new organization which would bring together at regular intervals those 
interested in the promotion of sociological studies. 

Quite as much as the economists, who formed a national association twent3r^ 
one years ago, or as the political scientists, who formed the Political Science 
Association four years ago, American sociologists, like their European colleagues, 
have need of the stimulus and the mutual criticism which would come from an 
organization that is national, permanent, and scientific in character. Such an 
organization would, it was felt, bring historical, theoretical, and practical 
sociologists together in helpful' co-operation and exalt sociology in the eyes of 
the general public 

It is the purpose of the society, therefore, to include in its membership all 
those who recognize the importance of the scientific aspects of sociology — scien- 
tific philanthropists as well as teachers of sociology, sociological workers as well 
as sociological writers. The membership fee is Three Dollars a year, or Fifty 
Dollars f9r Life Membership. Each member will receive a copy of the current 
publications of the Society, and The American Journal of Sociology, Application 
blanks, as well as further information concerning the Society, may be obtained 
of the Secretary, Professor C. W. A. Veditz, George Washii«^gton University, 
Washington, D, C. 



PUBLICATIONS 

OF THE 

AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



GENERAL TOPIC: 

THE FAMILY 



/ 



PAPERS AND PROCEEDINGS 
THIRD ANNUAL MEETING 

American 
Sociological Society 

HELD AT ATLANTIC CITY, N. J. 
DECEMBER 28-30, 1908 



VOLUME 111 



PUBUSHBD FOR THE 

AMKRICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOaETY 

BY 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 

CHICAGO AND NEW YORK 




P'o^vt- 



^»V'Vr>t..«^ 



Published May i» X909 



By 

TlM Unlwdtj of Chkago Pnw 
Cldci«o.Illiiioto.U.S.A. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 
The Family and Social Change, William G. Sumner . . i 

How Home Conditions React Upon the Family, Char- 
lotte Perkins Gilman i6 

The Effect on Woman of Economic Dependence, 

Charles Zu£bli/n 30 

Discussion of Mr. Zueblin's Paper, 

By I. M. Rubinow 38 

By Marion Talbot 43 

The Relations of Social Diseases to the Family, 

Prince A. Morrow 46 

Discussion of Dr. Morrow's Paper, 

By Professor Seligman 59 

By A. B. Wolfe 59 

By Anna Garlin Spencer 61 

The Influence of Income on Standards of Life, 

R. C. Chapin 63 

The Family in a Typical Mill Town^ Margaret F. 

Byington 73 

Results of the Pittsburgh Survey, Edward T. Devine 85 

Are Modern Industry and City Life Unfavorable to 

the Family? Charles Richmond Henderson ... 93 

Rural Life and the Family, Kenyon L. Butter field, . . 106 
Discussion of President Butterfield's Paper, 

By Paul U. Kellogg no 

Some Questions Concerning the Higher Education 

OF WoMEN^ D. Collin Wells 115 

How Does the Access of Women to Industrial Occu- 
pations React on the Family, U. G. Weatherly 124 

V 



VI TABLE OF CONTENTS -? 

Discussion of papers of Professors Wells and Weatherly, 

By Lydia Kingsmill Commander 136 

By Elsie Clew Parsons 142 

By Isabel C. Barrows 147 

Concluding Remarks of Professor Wells 149 

Is THE Freer Granting of Divorce an Evil? George 

Elliot Howard 150 

Discussion of Professor Howard's Paper, 

By Samuel W. Dike 160 

By Rabbi Krauskopf 164 

By J. P. Lichtenberger 169 

By Walter George Smith . 173 

By E. A. Ross 177 

Concluding Remarks of Professor Howard 178 

How Far Should Members of the Family be Indi- 
vidualized? James E. Hagerty 181 

Discussion of Professor Hagerty's Paper, 

By Albion W. Small , 190 

By James A. Field 194 

By Anna Garlin Spencer 196 

By Carl E. Parry 200 

By Maurice Parmelee 203 

Concluding Remarks of Professor Hagerty 205 

How Far Should Family Wealth Be Encouraged and 

Conserved? George K. Holmes 207 



THE FAMILY AND SOCIAL CHANGE* 



PROFESSOR WILLIAM G. SUMNER 
Yale University 



We currently speak of the "institution" of marriage. We 
also use marriage instead of wedding, nuptials, or matrimony. 
The result is confusion. A wedding or even nuptials occur as 
a ceremony or festival, on a day, and as the commencement of 
wedlock or matrimony. Wedlock may be an institution, but a 
wedding is not. A wedding lacks the duration or recurrence 
which belongs to an institution. It does not provide for an 
enduring necessity. It has no apparatus for the repeated use 
of the same couple. Wedlock is a permanent relation between a 
man and a woman which is regulated and defined by the mores. 
It brings the pair into co-operation for the struggle for exist- 
ence and the procreation and nurture of children. Wedlock 
therefore forms a family, and a family seems to satisfy our idea 
of an institution far better than marriage or matrimony. The 
family institution existed probably before marriage. A woman 
with an infant in her arms is what we see as far back as our 
investigations lead us. She was limited and burdened in the 
struggle for existence by her infant. The task of finding sub- 
sistence was as hard for her as for a man. The infant was 
another claimant of her time and labor. Her chance of survival 
was in union and co-operation with a man. Undoubtedly this 
gives us the real explanation of the primitive inferiority of 
woman. They needed the help of men more than men needed 
womeiTand if a union was made it was made on terms of which 
the woman got the disadvantage. It certainly is a g^eat mistake 
to believe that the women were put down because the men were 
physically stronger. In the first place the men are not always 
stronger; perhaps it is, as a rule, the other way. 

*AddreM of the president of the American Sociological Society at its third 
annual meeting in Atlantic City, N. J.» December 2S-Z0, Z908* 



2 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

Mr. H. H. Johnstone says of the Andombies on the Congo that the 
women, though working very hard as laborers in general, lead a very happy 
existence; they are often stronger than the men and more finely developed, 
some of them having splendid figures. Parke, speaking of the Manyuema of 
the Arruwimi in the same region, says that they are fine animals, and the 
women very handsome. They are as strong as the men. In North America 
an Indian chief once said to Heame, "Women were made for labor; one of 
them can carry, or haul, as much as two men can do." Schellong says of 
the Papuans in the German protectorate of New Guinea that the women are 
more strongly built than the men.^ 

Kubary^ says that a man has the right to beat his wife but 
the women are so robust that a man who tries to do it may well 
find that he will get the worst of it. Fights between men and 
women are not rare in savage life and the women prevail in a 
fair share of them. Holm mentions a case where a Greenland 
Eskimo tried to flog his wife but she flogged him.* We hear 
of a custom in South Eastern Australia that fights between the 
sexes were provoked when 

there were young women who were marriageable but were not mated, and 
when the eligible bachelors were backward. The men would kill a totem 
animal of the women or the women would kill a totem animal of the men. 
This led to a fight of the young men and young women. Then, after the 
wounds healed they would pair off and the social deadlock would pass away.* 

Another case, from higher civilization, shows how the woman 
was weakened by considerations of another kind. Sieroshevski, 
a Pole, who lived for twelve years among the Yakuts, says that 
he knew a Yakut woman who was constantly abused by her 
husband although she was industrious and good-natured. At 
last the European asked her why she did not fight. He assured 
her that she would succeed and he argued with her that if she 
would once give her husband a good beating he would not misuse 
her any more. She, however, answered that that would never 
do. Her husband's companions would deride him as the man 
whose wife beat him and their children would be derided by 
the other children for the same reason. She would not do any- 

^H. Ellis, Man and Woman, p. 4. 

*Nukuoro, p. 35» 

* AngmagsUkeme, p. 55* 

*Howitt, South Eastern Australia, p. 149. 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 3 

thing which would produce that consequence and would make 
her worse oflF. This case has many parallels. A characteristic 
incident occurred at the Black Mountain station on the Snowy 
River about the years 1855-56. 

A number of Theddora (Ya-itma-thang) blacks had come across from 
Omeo and there met a woman, known to me as Old Jenny, of their tribe, 
who had broken their law by becoming the wife of a man to whom she 
stood in the tribal relationship of Najan (mother). She had been away 
for some years, and this was the first time that her kindred had encountered 
her. The wife of one of them attacked her first with a digging-stick, but 
she defended herself so well with the same weapon that the woman had 
to desist, and her husband continued the attack on Old Jenny, who had 
divested herself of all but one small garment. He commenced with a 
club, but finding he could not hit her, changed it for a curved club with 
which he tried to "peck" her on the head over guard. After a time he 
also had to give it up, and they had to make friends with the invincible 
woman. This is an instance of the manner in which the women are able 
to defend themselves with their weapon, the "yam-stick," being no mean 
opponents of a man armed only with a club.' 

The status of women was generally sad and pathetic in 
savage life but we may accept it as an established fact that that 
was not because she was physically inferior to man but that it 
was due to inferiority in the struggle for existence on account 
of maternity. In the family the man often tyrannized over the 
woman, and the woman came into the family unwillingly, driven 
by a greater necessity, but the family was not a product of force. 
It was a product of contract. It was controlled by the mores 
which soon established notions of the right way to behave and 
of rights and duties which would be conducive to prosperity and 
happiness. 

In this primitive society the family became the arena in which 
folkways were formed and taught, traditions were handed down, 
myths were invented, and sympathies were cultivated. The 
mother and the children were in the closest association and 
intimacy. The instruction of example was the chief instruction, 
without spoken command or explanation. It makes little differ- 
ence whether we think of a family in a horde or of a monandrous 
family of Australians or Bushmen. The children learned from 

*Howitt, p. Z97. 



4 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

their mothers the usages which were domestic and familiar, which 
underlie society and are moral in their character. At puberty 
the boys went with their fathers into the political body and 
became warriors and hunters. Then they were disciplined into 
the life of men and left the family. They got wives and founded 
families, but the father, in his own family, was an outsider and a 
stranger with few functions and little authority. 

Mohammed gave approval to the father-family which seems 
to have been winning acceptance in his time. Islam is founded 
on the father-family. In the Koran women are divided into 
three classes in respect to marriage: First, wives, that is, status- 
wives with all the rank, honor, and rights which the name 
implies; second, concubines, that is, wives of an inferior class, 
in a permanent and recognized relation but without the rank 
and honor of wives; thirdly, slaves, whose greatest chance of 
happiness was to "find favor" in the eyes of their master or 
owner. This classification of the wives was also a classification 
of the mothers and it produced jealousy and strife of the chil- 
dren. Only men of rank and wealth could have households of 
this complex character. Those of limited means had to choose 
which form of wife they would take. The full status-wife could 
make such demands that she became a great burden to her 
husband and it appears that the Moslems now prefer concubines 
or slaves. In Mohammedan royal families the jealousies and 
strifes of children, where the son of a slave might be preferred 
and made heir by the father, have reduced kingdoms and families 
to bloodshed and anarchy. 

In general, in the mother-family, the family must have 
lacked int^^tion and discipline. The Six Nations or Iroquois 
had the mother-family in well-developed form. Each woman 
with her husband and children had a nxwn about 7 feet square 
in the "long house." This room was separated from others 
inhabited by similar families, not by a partition but only by a 
pole three or four feet from the floor over which skins were 
hung. Each family shared fire with another family opposite. 
Evidently privacy was only imperfectly secured. Any man who 
did not bring in what was considered his fair share of food- 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS $ 

supply could be expelled at any time. A husband had to satisfy 
not only his wife but all her female relatives if he was to be 
in peace and comfort. He could withdraw when he chose but 
he must leave his children which belonged to his wife. He must 
also keep the peace with all the other husbands in the house while 
it is easy to see that frequent occasions of quarrel would occur. 
In short, the man had constant and important reasons to be dis- 
satisfied with the mother-family. He always had one alternative ; 
he could capture a woman outside the group. If he did this he 
distinguished himself by military prowess and the woman was 
a trophy. He was not limited in his control of her or their 
children by any customs or traditions and he could arrange his 
life as he pleased. We should expect that great numbers of 
men would try this alternative but it does not appear that many 
did so. If they had done so they would have speedily introduced 
man-descent and the father-family. As we well know un- 
civilized men do not freely reflect on their experience or discuss 
reforms or speculate on progress. They accept custom and 
tradition and make the best of it as they find it. The change 
to the man-family was brought about by some great change in 
the conditions of the struggle for existence or by the invention 
of a new tool or weapon used by the men or by war with power- 
ful neighbors. This much, however, can be said with confi- 
dence about the family under woman-descent: It was the 
conservative institution of that form of society in which tradi- 
tions were cherished and education was accomplished. It did 
not encourage change or cherish reforms. It preserved what 
had been inherited and protected what existed. 

Probably the change from mother-family to father-family 
was by far the greatest and most important revolution in the 
history of civilization. This was so because the family, espe- 
cially in primitive society, is such a fundamental institution that 
it forces all other societal details into conformity with itself. 
Miss Kingsley, speaking of the negroes of West Africa, de- 
scribes societal details as follows : 

The really responsible male relative is the mother's older brother. From 
him must leave to marry be obtained for either girl or boy; to him and 



6 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

the mother must the present be taken which is exacted on the marriage 
of a girl, and should the mother die, on him and not on the father, lies 
the responsibility of rearing the children. They go to his house and he 
treats and regards them as nearer and dearer to himself than his own 
children, and at his death, after his own brothers by the same mother, they 
become his heirs.* 

These details are all consistent with the mother-family and per- 
fectly logical deductions from its principles. There never was 
any such thing as woman-rule if by that it should be imderstood 
that women administered and conducted in detail the affairs of 
house or society, directing the men what they should do or not 
do, but the women of the Iroquois r^^ated the house life, they 
owned the land, in the only sense in which Indians could con- 
ceive of land-owning, because they tilled it, they established 
the reputation of warriors and so determined who should be 
elected war chief in any new war, and they decided the treatment 
of captives. Women, however, never made a state, and war, so 
long as the woman-family existed, was always limited and 
imperfect. It was never decided whether a man must fight with 
his wife's people or go back to the dan in which he was bom 
and fight with that. War was oftenest about women, or about 
blood-revenge. It was, as among our Indians, a raid and not 
a persistent campaign. It was mean, cowardly, savage, and 
marked by base bloodshed. 

Much of this seems strange and inverted to us, because our 
society has long been on the father-family. The state has long 
been the institution, or set of institutions, on which we rely for 
our most important interests and our notions of kinship, of 
rights, of moral right or wrong, and our ways of property, in- 
heritance, trade, and intercourse have all been created by or 
adjusted to the system of man-descent. We can see what a great 
revolution had to be accomplished to go over from woman- 
descent to man-descent. Christian missionaries now often find 
themselves entangled in this transition. In West Africa the 
native tie between mother and children is far closer than that 
between father and children. The negro women do not like the 

^Travel* in West Africa, p. 224. 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 7 

change which white culture would bring about In native law 
husband and wife have separate property. If white man's law 
was introduced, the woman would lose her property and would 
not get her husband's. The man also objects to giving his wife 
any claim on his property. At the same time he does not want 
the children saddled on him. It seems to him utter absurdity 
that it should be his duty to care more for his wife than for 
his mother and sister.^ At every point, in going over to the 
father-family, there is a transfer of rights and power and a 
readjustment of social theory. 

In the long history of the man-family men have not been 
able to decide what they ought to think about women. ^ It has 
been maintained that woman is man's greatest blessing and again 
that she is a curse. Also the two judgments have been imited by 
saying that she is a cheat and a delusion. She looks like a bless- 
ing while she is a curse. Each of those exaggerated views sup- 
ported the other. Every blessing may appear doubtful, under 
circumstances; every curse will sometimes appear to be a blessing. 
What was most important about both these views was that man 
was regarded as independent and complete in the first place and 
the woman was brought to him as a helpmeet or assistant; at 
least as an inferior whose status and destiny came from her 
position as an adjunct. That was the position of woman in the 
man-family. We have abandoned part of the harshness of this 
construction of the status of woman and all the unkind deduc- 
tions from it. The moral inferences, however, remain, and we 
r^^rd them as self-evident and eternal. Lojralty to her husband 
is the highest virtue of a woman and devotion to her family 
and sacrifice for it are the field of heroism for her. We speak 
of the Christian family as the highest form of the family and, 
in our literature and our current code the Christian family is 
considered as furnishing women with their grand arena for self- 
culture and social work. I cannot find that Christianity has 
done anjrthing to shape the father-family. The Old Testament 
tells us hardly anything about the Jewish family. In Proverbs 
we find some weighty statements of general truths, imiversally 

* Kingsley, West African Studies, p. 377. 



8 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

accepted, and some ideal descriptions of a good wife. The 
words of Lemuel in chap. 31 are the only didactic treatment of 
the good wife in the Old Testament. She is described as a 
good housekeeper, a good cook, and a diligent needlewoman. 
Such was the ideal Jewish woman. In the New Testament there 
is no doctrine of marriage, no description of the proper family, 
and no exposition of domestic virtues. Down to the time of 
Christ it appears that each man was free to arrange his family as 
he saw fit The rich and great had more than one wife or they 
had concubines. The Talmud allowed each man four wives but 
not more. In fact at the birth of Christ among Jews, Greeks, 
and Romans, all except the rich and great had one wife each, on 
account of the trouble and expense of having more. Yet, if 
circimistances, such as childlessness, seemed to make it expedient, 
anyone might take a second wife. Therefore it became a fact of 
the mores of all but the rich and great that all practiced pair- 
marriage and were educated in it. 

Christianity took root in the lowest free classes. It got the 
mores from them and in later centuries gave those mores 
authority and extension. This is the origin and historical 
source of the Christian family. The Pharisees are credited 
with introducing common-sense into domestic relations. They 
made the Sabbath an occasion of ^'domestic joy," bringing into 
increasing recognition the importance and dignity of woman 
as the builder and guardian of the home. They also set aside 
the seclusion of women at child-birth, in spite of the law.^ A 
leader of the Pharisees introduced the Ketubah, or marriage 
document, "to protect the wife against the caprice of the hus- 
band.'* The Shammaites would not allow a wife to be divorced 
except on suspicion of adultery, but the Hillelites allowed more 
easy divorce for the "welfare and peace of the home."* The 
ancient Romans practiced pure monogamy but after they de- 
veloped a rich leisure class, in the second century b. c, they 
practiced luxurious polygamy. The traditions which came down 
into the Christian church were confused and inconsistent and 

• Lev. 13 :4-7 ; 15 : 1^24. 

* lewish Encyclopedia, Vol IX, pp. 663 f. 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 9 

various elements have from time to time got the upper hand in 
the history of the last 1,900 years. Gide says : 

In a word, the law of the gospel accomplished a radical revoltttion in 
the constitution of the family. It broke domestic tyranny and recom- 
posed the unity of the family by uniting all its members under mutual duties. 
It elevated and ennobled marriage by giving it a heavenly origin, and it 
made of marriage a union so intimate and so holy that God alone can 
break it" 

This is a good literary statement of what is generally taught 
and popularly believed, but it is impossible to verify it. We can- 
not tell what was the origin of our modem pair-marriage, but 
it grew up in the mores of the humble classes in which Qiris- 
tianity found root. In the first centuries of the Christian era 
the leading classes at Rome went through rapid corruption and 
decay, but the laboring classes had little share in this life. 
Christian converts could easily hold aloof from it During the 
first four centuries Christians believed that the world was about 
to perish. Evidently this belief affected the whole philosophy 
of life. Marriage lost sense and the procreation of children 
lost interest. This may be seen in I Cor., chap. 7. It also helps 
to explain the outburst of asceticism and extravagant behavior 
such as the renunciation of conjugal intimacy by married people. 

Paul also, as is well known, discusses the renunciation of marriage, 
but he speaks with remarkable restraint, and urges objections. John of 
Asia Minor appears in tradition as the apostle of virginity, and the glori- 
fication of virgins" confirms this view of his. But it is something quite 
different from this when false teachers are said in the Pastoral Epistles 
to hinder marriage." Procreation as such was considered sin, and the 
cause of death's domination. Christ came to break away from it" Hence, 
on the other hand, we have the idealizing of Christian motherhood." 
Woman fell into sin but shall be saved through child-bearing. Sexual 
impulse is a foul frenzy, something devilish." Stories of the lust of the 
devil and his companions after beautiful women make up the gnostic 
romances. The horribleness and insatiableness of the sensual passions are 
illustrated by all sorts of terrible tales." 

^Condition privSe de la femtM, p. 195- 

"Apoc. 14:4. "I Tim. 4:3. 

^ Satomil apud Iren., i* 34* 3 ; Tatian, ibid., 38* x ; Gospel of the Egyptiam. 

"I Tim. 2:15. "Act Joh., 113, p. 213. 

"Dobschutz, Christian Life in the Primitive^ Church, pp. 26 1, 262, 



lO THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

V 

It may indeed have happened, as the Acts of Thomas report, that 
bride and bridegroom from the very marriage-day renounced wedlock, 
and man and wife separated from one another. In particular, the con- 
tinually recurring narratives of a converted wife avoiding conmion life 
with her unbelieving husband seem to be taken from life. We have 
the express witness, not only of Christian apologists, but also of the 
heathen physician Galen, that among the Christians many women and men 
abstained all their life from the intercourse of sex. It is not possible for 
us to estimate the actual spread of this kind of absolute renunciation." 

On the one hand the women are little thought of. In the Qementine 
homilies (3:22) it is expressly declared that the nature of woman is 
much inferior to that of man. Women, except the mother of Qement, 
play almost no r61e in this romance." 

Professor Donaldson^* shows the error of supposing that 
Christianity raised the status of women. 

It is rather a formulation due to dogmatic than historical interests 
to assert that the worth of women came to recognition first in Christianity 
and in Christianity from the very beginning."* 

Renan says that Christianity, in the second century of the 
Christian era, "gave complete satisfaction to just those needs of 
imagination and heart which then tormented the populations" 
around the Mediterranean. It offered a person and an ideal. It 
made no such demand on credulity as the old mythologies which 
had now lost their sense. It joined stoicism in hostility to idols 
and bloody sacrifices and the faith in Jesus superseded ritual. 
Renan thinks it a wonder that Christianity did not sooner win 
control, but at Rome, all the civil maxims were against it.*^ The 
latest scholars also recognize the strong rivalry between Chris- 
tianity and Mithraism. 

Tertullian (bom a. d. 160) was an extremist among Chris- 
tian ascetics, but he was one of the ablest and most influential 
men of his time. Addressing women he says .•** 

" op, at. 

''Ibid., 263. 

^Contemp. Rev., September, 1889. 

"^Tschamak, Der Dienst der Frau in den ersten lahrhunderten der 
ehristlichen Kirche, p. 5. 

^ Renan, Marcus Aurelius, pp. 582-85. 
*De Cultu Feminarum, i, i. 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 1 1 

Woman, thou shouldst always be dressed in mourning and in rags, 
and shouldst not offer to the eyes anything but a penitent drowned in 
tears and thus shouldst thou pay ransom for thy fault in bringing the 
human race to ruin! Woman, thou art the gate by which the demon 
enters! It was thou who corruptedst him whom Satan did not dare to 
attack in face [man]. It is on thy account that Jesus Christ died. 

It was the doctrine of the church fathers who lived about 400 
A. D. that marriage is a consequence of original sin, and that, 
but for the first sin, God would have provided otherwise for the 
maintenance of the human species.^' *'Let us cut up by the 
roots," said Jerome,, "the sterile tree of marriage. God did 
indeed allow marriage at the beginning of the world, but Jesus 
Christ and Mary have now consecrated virginity." Virginity 
thus furnished the ideal in the church and not honest wedlock. 

Juvenal and Tacitus give us pictures of Roman (heathen) 
society in the first centuries of the Christian era which would 
make us doubt if there was any family at all, but some of our 
later historians have well pointed out that we ought not to take 
the statements in Juvenal and Tacitus as characteristic of all 
Roman society. 

Let me quote two or three passages from Dill about Roman 
women of the empire : 

Tacitus, here and there, gives glimpses of self-sacrifice, courageous 
loyalty, and humanity, which save his picture of society from utter 
gloom. The love and devotion of women shine out more brightly than 
ever against the background of baseness. Tender women follow their 
husbands or brothers into exile, or are found ready to share their death. 
Even the slave girls of Octavia brave torture and death in their hardy 
defense of her fair fame. There is no more pathetic story of female 
heroism than that of Politta, the daughter of L. Vetus Vetus him- 
self was of the nobler sort of Roman men, who even then were not 
extinct. When he was advised, in order to save the remnant of his 
property for his grandchildren, to make the emperor chief heir, he spumed 
the servile proposal, divided his ready money among his slaves, and pre- 
pared for the end. When all hope was abandoned, father, grandmother, 
and daughter opened their veins and died together in the bath. .... 

The bohemian man of letters (Juvenal) had heard many a scandal 
about great ladies, some of them true, others distorted and exaggerated 
by prurient gossip, after passing through a hundred tainted imaginations. 

"See Chrysostom, De Virginitate, i, 282. 



12 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

In his own modest class, female morality, as we may infer from the 
Inscriptions and other sources, was probably as high as it ever was, as 
high as the average morality of any age. There were aristocratic families, 
too, where the women were as pure as Lucretia or Cornelia, or any matron 
of the olden days. The ideal of purity, both in men and women, in some 
circles was actually rising. In the families of Seneca, of Tacitus, of 
Pliny, and of Plutarch, there were not only the most spotless and high- 
minded women, there were also men with a rare conception of temperance 
and mutual love, of reverence for a pure wedlock, to which S. Jerome and 
S. Augustine would have given their benediction. Even Ovid, that "de- 
bauchee of the imagination,'' writes to his wife, from his exile in the 
Scythian wilds, in the accents of the purest affection 

Dion Chrysostom was probably the first of the ancients to raise a clear 
voice against the traffic in frail beauty which has gone on pitilessly from 
age to age. Nothing could exceed the vehemence with which he assails an 
evil which he regards as not only dishonoring to human nature, but charged 
with the poison of far-spreading corruption. Juvenal's ideal of purity, 
therefore, is not peculiar to himself. The great world was bad enough; 
but there was another world beside that whose infamy Juvenal has 
immortalised. .... 

From the days of Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, to the days of 
Placidia, the mother of Honorius, Roman women exercised, from time to 
time, a powerful, and not always wholesome, influence on public affairs. 
The politic Augustus discussed high matters of state with Livia. The 
reign of Claudius was a reign of women and freedmen. Tacitus records, 
with a certain distaste for the innovation, that Agrippina sat enthroned 
beside Qaudius on a lofty tribunal, to receive the homage of the captive 
Caractacus. Nero emancipated himself from the grasping ambition of his 
mother only by a ghastly crime. The influence of Caenis on Vespasian in 
his later days tarnished his fame. The influence of women in provincial 

administration was also becoming a serious force Thus Juvenal 

was fighting a lost battle, lost long before he wrote. For good or evil, 
women in the first and second centuries were making themselves a power."* 

The Christian emperors made the dower of the wife not 
simply the property of the two spouses. It was the endowment 
of the new household, a sort of reserve fund which the law 
assures to the children which they would find intact in spite of 
the ruin of their family, if it should occur. The dower was 
offset also by the gift propter nuptias which the man must give. 
The law also provided that the dower and the gift propter nuptias 

■*Dill, Nero to Marcus Aurelius, pp. 48, 49, 7^, 77, 8x. 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 13 

should be equal and that the spouses should have the same rights 
of survivorship. 2*^ These seem to be distinct improvements on 
the dotal system, but that system has dropped out of popular use 
in modem times and the advantage of this legislation has been 
lost with it. 

The family was more affected by the imperial constitutions 
of the fourth century which enacted the views and teachings of 
the clergy of that time. Constantine endeavored to put an end to 
concubinage, and the power of mothers over their children as to 
property and marriage was made equal to that of fathers.^® It 
appears that the collapse of the ancient society and the decay of 
the old religion with the rise of Christianity and Mithraism with 
new codes of conduct and duty produced anarchy in the mores 
which are the every-day guides of men as to what they ought to 
do. On the one side we find asceticism and extreme rigor and 
then by the side of it, in the Christian church, extravagant license 
and grotesque doctrine. What element conquered, and why, it 
seems impossible to say. The society of western Europe emerged 
from the period of decay and rejuvenation in the twelfth century 
with some wild passions and dogmas of commanding force. 
Over-population produced social pressure and distress with the 
inevitable tragedy in human affairs. The other world was fig- 
ured by unrestrained imagination and religion went back to 
primitive demonism. 

Out of this period came the canon law. 

Of all civil institutions, marriage is the one which the canon law most 
carefully regulated, and this is the idea from which all its prescriptions 
were derived; viz., marriage is a necessary evil which must be tolerated, 
but the practice of which must be restrained." 

The doctrine of this law is that "woman was not made in the 
image of God. Hence it appears that women are subordinated 
to men and that the law meant them to be almost servants in the 
household."*® From this starting-point the law went on ration- 
ally although it contained two inconsistent ideas, the merit of 

■•Gide, 315. "Cod. Thcod^ iv, 6. 

"Gide, Condition pricSe de la femme, p. 202. 
^Can, X3-i9> caus. xxxiii, qu. 5. 



14 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY 

wedlock and the merit of celibacy^ The product of such incon- 
sistency was necessarily base. Some parts of the literary record 
which remain to us would lead us to believe that the whole society 
was brutal and vicious, but when we think of the thousands 
of families who died without ever making a mark on the record 
we must believe that domestic virtue and happiness were usual 
and characteristic of the society. The best proof of this is 
presented by the efforts at reform throughout the fifteenth 
century and the vigor of the reformation of the sixteenth century. 
The hot disputes between Protestants and Catholics turned 
chiefly on the doctrine of the mass and on sacerdotal claims 
but they contained also an element of dissatisfaction with in- 
herited mores about marriage and the family. The Protestants 
denounced the abuses which had grown up around the monas- 
teries and the gratuitous misery of celibacy. They, however, 
lost the old ideas about marriage and divorce and the Catholics 
denounced them for laxity and vice. At the Council of Trent, 
in 1563, the Catholics made a new law of marriage, in which 
they redefined and strengthened the ritual element. 

Out of all that strife and turmoil our modern family has 
come down to us. 

The churches and denominations are now trying to win some- 
thing in their rivalry with each other by the position they adopt 
in regard to marriage and divorce and the family. The family 
in its best estate, now among us, is a thing which we may con- 
template with the greatest satisfaction. When the parents are 
united by mutual respect and sincere affection and by joint zeal 
for the welfare of their children the family is a field of peace 
and affection in which the most valuable virtues take root and 
grow and character is built on the firmest foundation of habit. 
The family exists by tradition and old custom faithfully handed 
down. Our society, however, has never yet settled down to estab- 
lished order and firm tradition since the great convulsion of the 
sixteenth century. Perhaps the family still shows more fluctua- 
tion and uncertainty than any other of our great institutions. 
Different households now differ greatly in the firmness of 
parental authority and the inflexibility of filial obedience. Many 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS IS 

nowadays have abandoned the old standards of proper authority 
and due obedience. The family has to a jjeat ext«it lost its 
position as a conservative institution and has become a field for 
social change. This, however, is only a part of the decay of 
doctrines once thought most sound and the abandonment of 
standards once thought the definition of good order and stability. 
The changes in social and political philosophy have lowered the 
family. The family has not successfully resisted them. Part 
of the old function of the family seems to have passed to the 
primary school, but the school has not fully and intelligently taken 
up the functions thrown upon it. It appears that the family now 
depends chiefly on the virtue, good sense, conception of duty, 
and spirit of sacrifice of the parents. They have constantly new 
problems to meet. They want to do what is right and best. 
They do not fear change and do not shrink from it. So long 
as their own character is not corrupted it does not appear that 
there is any cause for alarm. 



HOW HOME CONDITIONS REACT UPON 
THE FAMILY 



MRS. CHARLOTTE PERKINS OILMAN 
New York City, N. Y. 



Discussion of social processes, to be fruitful, must rest on 
some hypothesis as to the nature and purpose of society. It is 
here assumed that society is a life-form in course of evolution, 
that its processes are to be measured like those of other life- 
forms, as they affect the three main issues of existence — ^being, 
reproduction, improvement. 

In so far as social processes are genetic they interest us as 
students and critics; in so far as they are tdic they form the most 
practical and important subjects of study. The family has its 
origin in the genetic process of reproduction; but is modified 
continually by telic forces. In its present form it is an institution 
of confused values, based on vital necessity, but heavily encum- 
bered with rudiments of earlier stages of development, some 
beneficent, some useless, some utterly mischievous ; and showing 
also the thriving growth of new and admirable features. 

We must consider it first on its biological basis, as a sex- 
related group for the purpose of rearing young; and the effect 
of conditions upon it should be measured primarily by this 
purpose. 

Next we find in the existing family clear traces of that early 
long-dominant social tmit, the woman-centered group of the 
matriarchate. Our universal and deep-seated reverence for the 
mother-governed home, with its peace, comfort, order, and good- 
will, has survived many thousand years of patriarchal govern- 
ment, and refuses to be changed even by innumerable instances 
of discomfort, discord, waste, and unhappiness. 

Superimposed upon this first social group comes the estab- 
lishment of the patriarchate, the family with the male head, 
based upon the assumption by the male of sole efficiency as trans- 

i6 



REACTION OF HOME CONDITIONS ON FAMILY 17 

mitter of life. In this form the family enters upon an entirely 
new phase, and includes purposes hitherto unknown. It becomes 
a vehicle of masculine power and pride — ^was indeed for long 
their sole vehicle: it produces its ethics, its codes of honor, its 
series of religions, its line of political development through tribe 
and clan, princedom and monarchy, its legal system in which all 
personal and property rights are vested in the man, and its 
physical expression in the household of servile women. It is 
from this period that we derive our popular impressions that 
the family is the unit of the state, that the man is the head of the 
house, and other supposedly self-evident propositions. The patri- 
archal family, even in its present reduced and modified form, is 
the vital core and continuing cause of our androcentric culture. 

Fourthly, we must view it as an industrial group of self- 
centered economic activities, the birthplace of arts and crafts 
as well as of persons. While the natural origin of these industries 
is in maternal energy, the voluntary efforts of the mother being 
the real source of human production, yet the family, as an eco- 
nomic group in the modem sense, is also an androcentric institu- 
tion. Besides the mother's work for her children, the patriarchal 
family required the service of the man by his women — a claim 
which has no parallel in nature. 

There is nothing in maternity, nothing in the natural relation 
of the sexes which should make the female the servant of the 
male. This form of economic relationship was developed when 
the man learned to take advantage of the industrial value of the 
woman and added to his profitable group as many women as 
possible. Moreover, when the masculine instinct of sex-combat 
swelled and broadened, blended with the hunter's predatory appe- 
tite, organized, and became war, then in course of time male 
captives were compelled to labor as the price of life, and set to 
work in the only social group then existent. It is to this custom, 
to this remote and painful period, that our institution owes its 
present name. Not father, mother, nor child, but servant, chris- 
tens the family. 

Further than this we find in our family group the develop- 
ment of a new relation, a new idea as yet but little understood, 



l8 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

that which is vaguely expressed by the word marriage. Monog- 
amy, the permanent union of one male and one female for repro- 
ductive purposes, is as natural a form of sex-relation as any 
other, common to many animals and birds, a resultant of con- 
tinued and combined activities of both parents for the same end. 
This natural base of a true marriage should be carefully studied. 
Continued union in activity for a common purpose necessarily 
develops ease and pleasure in the relationship. The same couple 
can carry on these activities more easily than a new combination ; 
hence monogamy. 

In our human family we find many forms: androgjmy, 
polygyny, and then the slow and halting evolution of monogjmy. 
Monogynous marriage should include sex-attraction, romantic 
love, and a high degpree of comradeship. It is now our common 
race ideal, recognized as best for the advantage of the child and 
the individual happiness of the parent; also, through greater 
personal efficiency, for the good^ of society. This form of mar- 
riage is slowly evolving in the family, but is by no means 
invariably present 

Lastly we must bear in mind that the family is our accepted 
basis of mere living; it, and its outward expression, the home, 
are so imiversally assumed to be the only natural form of exist- 
ence, that to continue on earth outside of *'a family," without 
*'a home," is considered tuinatural and almost immoral. In this 
regard the family must be studied as ministering to the health, 
comfort, happiness, and efficiency of adult individuals, quite aside 
from parental purposes, or those of marriage; as for instance 
in the position of adult sons and daughters, of aged persons 
no longer actively valuable as parents; or of coadjacent aunts, 
uncles, and cousins; as also in relation to the purely individual 
interests of members of the family proper. 

When we now take up our study of home conditions, we have 
definite ground from which to judge and to measure them. How 
do they react upon the family in r^fard to those three major 
purposes of life — ^being, reproduction, improvement? Do they 
best maintain human life? Do they best minister to the repro- 



REACTION OF HOME CONDITIONS ON FAMILY 19 

duction of the species? And to the evolution of monogyny? 
Above all do they tend to race improvement? 

Mere existence is no justification, else might we all remain 
Archaean rocks. Reproduction is not sufficient, else the fertile 
bacteritmi would be our ideal. All social institutions must be 
measured as they tend not only to maintain and reproduce, but 
to improve humanity. We will make brief mention of our essen- 
tial home conditions and examine their reaction on the family 
as touching (a) marriage, (b) parentage, (c) child-culture, 
(d) the individual and social progress. What are our essential 
home conditions? 

Here we are confronted with so vast and tumultuous a sea of 
facts; noisy, painful, prominent facts; that proper perspective is 
difficult to obtain. Here we are confronted also with the most sen- 
sitive, powerful, universal, and ancient group of emotions known 
to man. This complex of feelings, tangled and knotted by ages 
of ironbound association; fired with the quenchless vitality of 
the biological necessities on which they rest; intensified by all our 
conscious centuries of social history; hallowed, sanctified, made 
imperative by recurrent religions; enforced with cruel penalties 
by law, and crueller ones by custom; first established by those 
riotous absurdities of dawning ethics, the sex-tabus of the primi- 
tive savage, and growing as a cult down all our ages of literature 
and art; the emotions, sentiments, traditions, race-habits, and 
fixed ideas which center in the home and family — form the 
most formidable obstacle to clear thought and wise conclusion. 

Forced by increasing instances of discontent, inefficiency, and 
protest within the group, we are beginning to make some study 
of domestic conditions ; but so far this study has been on the one 
hand superficial; and on the other either starkly reactionary or 
merely rebellious. 

The first home conditions forced upon our consideration are 
the material. Here we note most prominently the effects of 
economic pressure in our cities; the physical restriction of the 
home in the block, the tenement, the apartment house; the dev- 
astating effects of the sweatshop; the tendency toward what 
we call "co-operative" housdceeping. 



20 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

As far as mere physical crowding is a home condition we 
may find that as far back as the cliff-dwellers, find it in every 
city of the world since there were cities, find it consistent with 
any form of marriage, with families matriarchal, patriarchal, 
polygjmous, and monogynous. The Jew throughout Christian 
history has suffered from overcrowding as much as any people 
ever did ; but he has preserved the family in a most intense form, 
with more success than many of the races which oppressed him. 
Even the sweatshop, while working evil to the individual, does 
but draw tighter the family bond. 

Therefore we are illogical in our fear of the city-crowding 
as the enemy of the home, the destroyer of family life. 

Others, identifying family life with the industries so long 
accompanying it, disapprove of that visible and rapid economic 
evolution in which the "domestic industries" as such dissolve 
and disappear. Yet if these observers would but study the 
history of economics they would find the period of undisputed 
"home industries" was not that of high development in family 
life, but rather of the mixed group of women slaves and male 
captives, when marriage in our sense was utterly unknown. The 
attempt to "revive home industries" is not difficult, since our 
modem family still maintains that primitive labor status; but 
it is reactionary, and tends to no real improvement. 

"Co-operative housekeeping," as a term, needs brief but clear 
discussion. The movement to which the phrase is applied is a 
natural one, inevitable and advantageous. It consists in the 
orderly development of domestic industries into social ones; in 
the gradual substitution of the shirt you buy for the shirt your 
wife makes, of the bread of the public baker for the bread of 
the private cook, of the wine of known manufacture and vintage 
for the wine made for you by your affectionate great-aunt. All 
industry was once domestic All industry is becoming social. 
That is the line of industrial evolution. Now what is "co- 
operative housekeeping" ? It is an attempt to continue domestic 
industry without its natural base. The family was for long the 
only economic unit. The family is still, though, greatly reduced 
and wastefully inefficient, an economic unit. A g^oup of 



REACTION OF HOME CONDITIONS ON FAMILY 2i 

families is not a unit at all. It has no structure, no function, no 
existence. Individuals may combine, do combine, should com- 
bine, must combine, to form social groups. Families are essen- 
tially uncombinable. 

Vintner, brewer, baker, spinner, weaver, dyer, tallow-chan- 
dler, soapmaker, and all their congeners were socially evolved 
from the practicers of inchoate domestic industries. Soon the 
cook and the cleaner wiH take place with these, as the launderer 
already has to a great degree. At no step of the process is there 
the faintest hint of "co-operative housekeeping." Forty families 
may patronize and maintain one bakeshop. They do not "co- 
operate" to do this; they separately patronize it. The same forty 
families might patronize and maintain one cookshop, and never 
know one another's names. 

If the forty families endeavored to "co-operate" and start 
that bakeshop, or that cookshop, they would meet the same diffi- 
culty, the same failure, that always faces ill^timate and un- 
natural processes. 

The material forms of home life, the character of its structure 
and functions depend upon the relation of the members of the 
family. In analyzing home conditions therefore we will classify 
them thus : 

A. Ownership of women. — It is to this condition that we 
may clearly trace the isolation of the home, the varying degree 
of segregation of the woman or women therein. The home is 
inaugurated immediately upon marriage, its nature and situation 
depending upon the man, and in it the man secludes his wife. 
In this regard our home is a lineal descendant of the harem. 
It is but a short time since the proverb told us "the woman, the 
cat, and the chimney should never leave the house;" and again, 
"A woman should leave the house but three times — ^when she is 
married, when she is christened, when she is buried." In cur- 
rent comment upon modern home conditions we still find deep 
displeasure that the woman is so much away from home. The 
continued presence of the woman in the home is held to be an 
essential condition. Following this comes — 

B. Woman-service. — ^The house is a place where the man 



22 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

has his meals cooked and served by the woman ; his general clean- 
ing and mending done by her ; she is his servant. This condition 
accompanies marriage, be it observed, and precedes maternity. 
It has no relation whatever to motherhood. If there are no chil- 
dren the woman remains the house-servant of the man. If 
she has many, their care must not prevent the service of his meals. 

In America today, in one family out of sixteen, the man is 
able to hire other women to wait upon him; but his wife is merely 
raised to the position of a sort of "section-boss;" she still man- 
ages the service of the house for him. This woman-service has 
no relation to the family in any vital sense; it is a relic of the 
period of woman-slavery in the patriarchal time; it exhibits not 
the evolution of a true monogamy, but merely the ancient indus- 
trial polygamous group shorn down to one lingering female 
slave. Under this head of wife-service, we must place all the 
confused activities of the modern home. Reduced and simplified 
as these are, they still involve several undeveloped trades and 
their enforced practice by nearly all women keeps down the 
normal social tendency to specialization. While all men, speak- 
ing generally, have specialized in some form of social activities, 
have become masons, smiths, farmers, sailors, carpenters, doctors, 
merchants, and the like; all women, speaking generally, have 
remained at the low industrial level of domestic servants. The 
limitation is clear and sharp, and is held to be an essential, if 
not the essential, condition of home life; the woman, being mar- 
ried, must work in the home for the man. We are so absolutely 
accustomed to this relation, that a statement of it produces no 
more result than if one solemnly announces that fire is hot and 
ice cold. 

To visualize it let us reverse the position. Let us suppose that 
the conditions of home life required every man upon marriage 
to become his wife's butler, footman, coachman, cook; every 
man, all men, necessarily following thte profession of domestic 
servants. This is an abhorrent, an incredible idea. So is the 
other. That an entire sex should be the domestic servants of 
the other sex is abhorrent and incredible. 

Under this same head we may place all the prominent but 



REACTION OF HOME CONDITIONS ON FAMILY 23 

little understood evils of the ''servant question." The position 
is simple. The home must be served by women. If the wife is 
unable to perform the service other women must be engaged. 
These must not be married women, for no married man wishes 
his private servant to serve another man. When the coachman 
marries the cook, he prefers to segregate her in the rooms over 
the stables, to cook for him alone. Therefore our women 
servants form an endless procession of apprentices, untrained 
young persons learning of the housewife mainly her personal 
preferences and limitations. Therefore is the grade of household 
services necessarily and permanently low; and household service 
means most of the world's feeding, cleaning, and the care of 
children. The third essential home condition is : 

C. The economic dependence of women. — ^This is the 
natural corollary of the other two. If a man keeps a servant he 
must feed him, or her. The economic dependence of the woman 
follows upon her servitude. The family with the male head has 
assumed that the male shall serve society and the female shall 
serve him. This opens up an immense field of consequences, 
reacting most violently upon the family, among which we will 
select here two most typical and conspicuous. Suppose that the 
man's social service is of small value as we measure and reward 
our laborers. His return is small. His wages we will roughly 
estimate at $600 a year, a sum the purchasing power of which 
is variable. In our present conditions $600 is little enough for 
one person. For two it allows but $300 each. For six, if they 
have four children, it is $100 a year apiece — ^less than $2.00 a 
week for each, to pay for food, clothes, shelter, ever)rthing. This 
visibly spells poverty. While one man's production is worth to 
society but so much, and while that one man's production is 
forced to meet the consumption of six; so long, even without 
any other cause, the resultant is general poverty — b, persistent 
condition in the majority of homes. To segregate half the pro- 
ductive energy of the world and use it in private service of the 
crudest sort is economic waste. To force the low-grade man 
to maintain an entire family is to force a constant large supply of 
low-grade men. 



24 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

The second of these consequences is the unnatural phenome- 
non of the idle woman. The man, whose sex-relation spurs him 
to industry, and whose exceptional powers meet special reward, 
then proceeds to shower gifts and pleasures upon the woman he 
loves. That man shall be "a good provider" is frankly held to 
be his end of the family duty, a most essential condition of home 
life. This result, as we so frequently and sadly see, is the devel- 
opment of a kind of woman who performs no industrial service, 
produces nothing, and consumes everything; and a kind of man 
who subordinates every social and moral claim to this widely 
accredited "first duty;" to provide, without limit, for his wife 
and children. 

These two home conditions: the enormous tax upon the 
father, if he is poor, together with the heavy toil of the mother, 
and the opposite one of the rich man maintaining a beautiful 
parasite, have visible and serious results upon the family. 

The supposedly essential basic relations, the ownership of 
woman, the servitude of woman, and the economic dependence of 
woman, with their resultants, g^ve rise to the visible material 
conditions with which we are familiar. The predominant con- 
cerns of the kitchen and dining-room, involving the entire service 
of the working housewife, rigidly measure the limitations of 
such families; while the added freedom of the woman whose 
housework is done vicariously seldom tends to a nobler life. 
Our insanitary households, our false and shallow taste, our low 
standard of knowledge in food values and nutrition, the various 
prosaic limitations within which we are born and reared are in 
the main traceable to the arrested development of the woman, 
owing to the above major conditions of home life. 

Let us now show the reaction of the conditions above stated 
upon the family in modem society, in the order given, as they 
affect (a) marriage, (&) maternity, (c) child-culture, {d) the 
individual and society. 

We are much concerned in the smooth and rapid development 
of a higher type of marriage, yet fail to see that our home condi- 
tions militate against such development. The effect of the modem 
home, even with its present degree of s^jegation of women, with 



REACTION OF HOME CONDITIONS ON FAMILY 25 

its inadequate, confused, laborious industrial processes, and with 
its overwhelming expenses, is to postpone and often prevent mar- 
riage, to degrade marriage when accomplished through the 
servile and dependent position of the wife, and also to precipitate 
unwise and premature marriage on the part of young women 
because of their bitter dissatisfaction with the conditions of their 
previous home. This last gives an advantage in reproduction 
to the poorer types. The wiser woman, preferring the ills she 
has to those she foresees only too clearly, hesitates long, delays, 
often refuses altogether; not from an aversion to marriage, or 
to motherhood, but from a steadily growing objection to the 
position of a servant. 

The man, seeing about him the fretful inefficiency of so many 
misplaced women, hearing ad nauseam the reiterant uniform 
complaints on "the servant question," knowing the weight of the 
increasing burden for which the man must "pay, pay, pay," waits 
longer and longer before he can "afford to marry;" with a 
resultant increase in immorality. 

This paradoxical position must be faced fully and squarely. 
The industrial conditions of the modem home are such as to 
delay and often prevent marriage. Since "the home" is supposed 
to arise only from marriage, it looks as though the situation 
were frankly suicidal. So far, not seeing these things, we have 
merely followed our world-old habit of blaming the woman. 
She used to be content with these conditions we say — ^she ought 
to be now — ^back to nature 1 The woman refuses to go back, 
the home refuses to go forward, and marriage waits. The 
initial condition of ownership, even without service, reacts un- 
favorably upon the kind of marriage most desired. A woman 
slave is not a wife. The more absolutely the woman is her own 
mistress, in accepting her husband and in her life with him, the 
higher is the grade of love and companionship open to them. 
Again the economic dependence of the woman militates against 
a true marriage, in that the element of economic profit degrades 
and commercializes love and so injures the family. It may be 
said that the family with the male head cannot exist in a pure 
form without its original concomitants of absolute personal 



26 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

ownership and exploitation of woman. When the ownership is 
no longer that of true slavery but enters the contract stage, when 
marriage becomes an economic relation, then indeed is it de- 
gradedw Polygyny is a low form of marriage; but, as modem 
polygynists have held, it at least tends to preclude prostitution. 
The higher marriage toward which we are tending requires a 
full-grown woman, no one's property or servant, self-supporting 
and proudly independent Such marriage will find expression 
in a very different home. 

Next comes the reaction upon motherhood, the most vital 
fact in the whole institution. Our home conditions affect mother- 
hood injuriously in many ways. The ownership of the woman 
by the man has developed a false code of morals and manners, 
under which girls are not reared in understanding of the privi- 
leges, rights, and pre-eminent duties of motherhood. We make 
the duty to the man first, the duty to the child second — an arti- 
ficial and mischievous relation. There is no more important 
personal function than motherhood, and every item of arrange- 
ment in the family, in the home, should subtend its overmastering 
interests. 

Ownership of women first interferes with the power of selec- 
tion so essential to right motherhood, and, second, enforces 
motherhood undesired — a g^rave physiological evil, ^he ensuant 
condition of female servitude is an injury in demanding labor 
incompatible with right maternity, and in lowering the average 
of heredity through the arrest of social development in the 
mother. It is not good for the race that the majority of its 
female parents should be unskilled laborers, plus a few unskilled 
idlers. 

In poverty the overworked woman dreads maternity, and 
avoids it if she can. If she cannot, her unwelcome and too 
frequent children are not what is needed to build up our people. 
In wealth, the woman becomes a perpetual child, greedy and 
irresponsible, dreads maternity, and avoids it if she can. Her 
children are few and often frail. Neither the conditions of the 
poor home nor of the rich tend to a joyous and competent 
maternity. 



REACTION OF HOME CONDITIONS ON FAMILY 27 

In this one respect the home, tinder present conditions, is 
proven an unfit vehicle for the family. In itself it tends to reduce 
the birth-rate, or to lower the quality of the most numerous 
children; and all of them inherit the limitations of a servile or 
an irresponsible motherhood. 

As regards child-culture, our home conditions present a 
further marked unfitness. Not one home in a thousand even 
attempts to make provision for child-culture. If the home has 
but one room that room is a kitchen; but few indeed are the 
families who can "afford a nursery." Child-care is wholly sub- 
ordinate to kitchen service; the home is a complicated, incon- 
sistent group of industries, m which the child must wait for 
spare moments of attention ; which attention when given is that 
of a tired cook, or a worried housekeeper. No clearer comment 
can be made on the inadequacy of home conditions to serve 
their natural ends than in this major instance; they do not pro- 
mote, but on the contrary they prohibit the development of higher 
standards of child-culture. 

As to mere maintenance of life, our children die most numer- 
ously during the years of infancy, when they are most wholly at 
home. As to reproduction, we have shown the effect on that; 
and as to improvement, it is a general admission that the im- 
provement of the human stock does not keep pace with material 
progress. We need here a wise revision of domestic conditions 
in the interests of the child. At present any man who has a 
home to let, be it room, apartment, or house, prefers his tenants 
to be without children. The home, the birthplace, the rearing- 
place, is not built, fitted, nor managed for the benefit of children. 

What is its further effect on the individual, and through him 
on society? Do the common home conditions of our time pro- 
mote health, insure peace and comfort, tend to that higher 
development of the individual so essential to social progress? 

Here we find another large ground for criticism. Modem 
society calls for individuals broad-minded, public-spirited, demo- 
cratic, courageous, just, intelligent, educated, and specialized for 
social service. The family with the male head and its accom- 
panying conditions of woman-ownership, service, and depend- 



28 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

ence tends to maintain in our growing democracy the grade of 
development, the habits of mind, the childish limitations of its 
remote past. In it is a masculine dominance which finds ex- 
pression in our political androcracy. In it is a d^raded woman- 
hood which not only limits individual development in the mother, 
but checks it in the father through heredity and association, and 
acts powerfully to keep back the progress of the child. Because 
of the low grade of domestic industry, the food habits of 
humanity have remained so long what they are, tending to self- 
indulgence and excels, to extravagance, to many forms of 
disease. 

Mere confinement to a house is in itself unwholesome, and 
when that house is a cookshop and laundry, it is further dis- 
advantageous. 

The man, bound in honor (in his androcentric code of honor) 
to provide at all costs for his dependent family, has saddled him- 
self with the task of making the product of one meet the con- 
sumption of many; and in making the woman a non-productive 
consumer, he has maintained in half the world the attitude of 
the child — ^the willingness to take, with no thought of giving 
an equivalent. 

The social processes, left wholly to the male, are necessarily 
belligerent and competitive; and in the resultant turmoil, each 
man must needs strive to maintain his little island of personal 
comfort rather than to do his best work for the world. 

Home conditions which tend to results like these require 
most serious consideration. They react upon the family in 
general as tending to restrict its natural evolution toward higher 
forms. They react upon it specifically as we have seen, precipi- 
tating injudicious marriage, postponing marriage, degrading 
marriage; similarly do they affect motherhood, enforcing it 
where the woman is not free to choose, and where she is free to 
choose tending to postpone and prevent it because of its diffi- 
culties. The mechanical and industrial conditions of our homes, 
with their reaction upon character, lie at the base of that artificial 
restriction of motherhood so widely lamented. 

Again they react upon child-culture, in age-long suppression 



REACTION OF HOME CONDITIONS ON FAMILY 29 

of that greatest of sciences, in confining the care of little chil- 
dren to the ignorance of incompetent mothers and less competent 
servants. While the home enforces the condition of female 
servitude our children must continue to be bom of and reared 
by servants. 

Finally, these same conditions, these limitations in structure 
and function, this arrested womanhood and low-g^ade child- 
culture do not tend to develop the best individuals nor to promote 
social progress. Such as we are we are largely made by our 
homes, and surely we do not wish to remain such as we are. Our 
average health, longevity, efficiency, standard of comfort, happi- 
ness, and pleasure do not show the most wholesome influences. 

The work of the constructive sociologist in this field is to 
establish what lines of change and development in our homes, 
what broad and hopeful new conditions, will act in harmony 
with social processes, will tend to a better marriage, a higher 
grade of motherhood, a freer and nobler environment for the 
individual. We need homes in which mother and father will be 
equally free and equally bound, both resting together in its 
shelter and privacy, both working together for its interests. 

This requires structural and functional changes that shall 
eliminate the last of our domestic industries and leave a home 
that is no one's workshop. 

The woman, no longer any man's property, nor any man's 
servant, must needs develop social usefulness, becoming more 
efficient, intelligent, experienced. Such women will bring to 
bear upon their proper problems, maternity and child-culture, a 
larger wisdom and a wider power than they now possess. 

The home, planned, built, and maintained by men and women 
of this sort, would react upon its constituent family in wholly 
advantageous ways. 



THE EFFECT ON WOMAN OF ECONOMIC 
DEPENDENCE 



CHARLES ZUEBLIN 
Boston, Mass. 



The most famous description of a virtuous woman, and one 
accepted equally by both sexes, is that which has been attributed 
to Solomon : 

"Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above 
rubies." The patriarchal estimate of virtue is thus evident 

"The heart of her husband shall safely trust in her so that he 
shall have no need of spoil." Thus removing the temptation 
which confronts the modem money king, who must provide for 
his ambitious wife's "conspicuous consumption." 

"She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. 
She seeketh wool and flax and worketh willingly with her hands. 
She is like the merchant-ships. She fcringeth her food from 
afar." Thus she not only tends the cattle and the fields, for the 
sake of both clothing and food, but she goes to the distant 
market 

"She riseth also while it Is yet night and giveth meat to her 
household, and a portion to her maidens." Early hours are quite 
indispensable considering the extent of her labors. 

"She considereth a field and buyeth it. With the fruit of 
her hands she planteth a vineyard." Her economies are not only 
sufficient for the needs of the household, but provide a surplus 
for investment 

"She girdeth her loins with strength and strengtheneth her 
arms." She has neither the time nor the need for the physical 
culture or the medical aid demanded by the prosperous woman 
of today. 

"She perceiveth that her merchandise is good, her candle 
goeth not out by night." Obviously because of her addiction 
to heavy work, not light literature. 

30 



WOMAN AND ECONOMIC DEPENDENCE 31 

"She layeth her hands to the spindle and her hands hold the 
distaff." Thus finding occupation for the winter as well as for 
the summer. 

*'She stretcheth out her hands to the poor, yea, she reacheth 
forth her hands to the needy." Even in those early and active 
days she found leisure for charity. 

"She is not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her 
household are clothed with double garments. She maketh her- 
self coverings of tapestry, her clothing is silk and purple." She 
was able to provide not only comforts for her family but luxuries 
for herself. 

"Her husband is known in the gates when he sitteth among 
the elders of the land." All this time her husband seems to have 
been absent at the l^slature, representing, as women might 
have thought, in anticipation of Matthew Arnold, "that power 
not ourselves that makes for" unrighteousness. 

"She maketh fine linen and selleth it and delivereth girdles 
unto the merchants." She not only dispenses with the need of 
a husband's support, but also has such excess of product that 
she can engage in a mercantile occupation, which helps to account 
for her ability to buy fields and to permit her husband to spend 
his time among the elders. 

"Strength and honor are her clothing and she shall rejoice 
in time to come." Presumably she did not have much time to 
rejoice while engaged in these various occupations. 

"She openeth her mouth with wisdom and in her tongue is 
the law of kindness. She looketh to the ways of her household 
and eateth not the bread of idleness." In fact, even from the 
masculine point of view she seems industrious. 

"Her children arise up and call her blessed. Her husband 
also, and he praiseth her." Praise seems to have been an after- 
thought on the part of husband, but certainly creditable consider- 
ing his preoccupation with the statesmen. 

"Many daughters have done virtuously." The marginal 
reading is "have gotten riches" which throws light on the atti- 
tude of both the original author and the King James translators, 
after an interval of twenty-five centuries. 



33 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

"But thou excdlest them all. Favor is deceitful and beauty 
is vain, but the woman that f eareth the Lord she shall be praised. 
Give her the fruit of her hands and let her own works praise her 
in the g^tes." This condescending attitude of the philosopher 
king, while characteristic of chivalry in all ages, seems not to 
have been followed to its logical conclusion. While her works 
are still allowed to praise her in the gates, or among the elders 
of the legislature, in lieu of any voice in her own government 
they still refuse to give her of the fruit of her hands. 

There has been skepticism in an unbelieving generation 
as to the riches of Solomon, and comparisons to his disadvantage 
have been made with the money kings of today. But the riches 
of Solomon are easily understood when one reads the descrip- 
tion, credited to him, of a virtuous woman and remembers that 
in addition to 300 concubines, he was said to have 700 such 
virtuous wives. The higher criticism may rob Solomon of the 
authorship of the Proverbs or the possession of one thousand 
wives, but it cannot dispute the continued acceptance of this 
ideal of a virtuous woman of three thousand years ago. She 
IS still allowed to rejoice in the fact that "virtue is its own 
reward." 

This hypothetical paragon of Solomon would have been an 
economic dependent, legally subject to man, gaining spiritual 
ends by circumlocution and hypocrisy, as truly as her leisured 
and less mythical sisters of today. In the course of the ages 
it has become less necessary to pursue this Solomonic inquiry 
than to join the search of Diogenes. Woman has been emanci- 
pated from most of these industrial obligations. With relief from 
them there has come increasing leisure, education, social activity, 
and economic freedom, but as yet no relation between services 
and income. 

In spite of these advances, which are almost exclusively 
modem, the majority of women remain economically dependent. 
A woman's intellectual and social possibilities are conditioned 
primarily by her husband's income. The million-dollar wife 
married to the thousand-dollar man may be uncommon, but less 
striking discrepancies to her disadvantage are usual. Even the 



WOMAN AND ECONOMIC DEPENDENCE 33 

wife of little capacity united to the man of wealth is unable to 
lead her normal life because she is usually r^^rded as a toy 
or dradge. The diflSculty is not only that woman is dependent 
upon man, nor that each woman is dependent on one man, but 
all of a woman's rich nature, the sum total of her personality, is 
dependent upon one man's income. 

Men are paid a certain amotmt of money for specific labors. 
But their wives have no claim upon any definite sum; they are 
dependent upon the generosity of the husbands. Happily this 
seems adequate in most cases. Indeed it is quite the custom 
among woridngmen to turn over all the family revenue into the 
hands of the wife. Among educated people generally it is custo- 
mary to determine the disposition of the purse beforehand, that 
disposition to remain through life. But the husband is the 
"treasurer," doling out the amount which may be at any time at 
his command or convenience, thereby controlling not only the 
economic but the spiritual life of his wife. 

The expression of this subjection, which is the most degrad- 
ing, comes in the appeal which seems to be increasingly made, 
or receives increasing publicity in the United States — ^the appeal 
to the unwritten law. When man's choicest piece of property is 
violated, he avenges himself. The appeal to the imwritten law 
is the appeal to a law which he dare not put in the statute books, 
where nearly all the laws are concerned with property, although 
in Oklahoma it has been proposed to legalize the imwritten law, 
so that it may be frankly and brutally written. For the most 
part where the unwritten law is most often appealed to, it is 
associated with the lowest depths of immorality. Only in the 
most barbarous parts of the United States would a jury acquit 
a man for the murder of his wife or her lover, but anywhere a 
jealous brute may in a fit of passion commit murder. It is never, 
however, because of love for his wife. No man ever kills his 
wife for love. He may die for love or live for It ; sometimes a 
woman kills herself for it, but she does not want that kind of 
defense from any man. Men with their property instincts have 
for the most part not yet learned that the inviolability of a 
woman's personality transcends in ethical importance that self- 



34 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

esteem which a property-loving man calls "honor." Even refined 
men who love the objects of their devotion, still often feel in- 
stinctively that they would, under provocation, take the law 
into their own hands, and use violence. But it is not an attribute 
of affection to do this, it is the property instinct which is stung. 

However, there is a subtler expression of economic mastery 
in the men of today — ^the grandiloquent attitude of the courtly 
gentleman who says, "Are not the American women the best, 
the most beautiful, the most versatile in the world? Have they 
not everything they want, and if there is anything they would 
like will we not give it to them? We care not how much these 
American queens take or get, so long as they recognize the source 
of their power." 

It would be unfair to say that most marriages are deliberately 
commercial; but most marriages will necessarily result in the 
dependence of woman imtil the equality of the sexes is recog- 
nized. As Havdock Ellis puts it, there is no hope for woman as 
long as she is looked upon "as a cross between an angel and an 
idiot." The age of chivalry has passed ; woman is more respected 
and less worshiped, but she cannot lead her own life until she 
has an equal chance with man. Even the main function of 
woman, maternity, and the chief end of marriage which makes 
the female conservative, while the male is aggressive, cannot 
result happily for offspring or parents, until the woman is 
granted the same control of her life as man enjoys. Edward 
Carpenter says: 

No eflFectual progress is possible until the question of her capacity for 
maternity is fairly faced — for healthy maternity involving thorough exer- 
cise and development of the body, a life more in the open air than at 
present — some amount of regular manual work, yet good opportunity for 
rest when needful, knowledge of the laws of health and physiology, widened 
mental training and economic independence. 

We may learn the wisdom of requiring caution in assuming 
the responsibilities of marriage and multiplying the examples of 
domestic bliss, but we cannot attain justice for women and chil- 
dren, nor the full benefits of sex-differentiation until women are 
given control of their incomes, and hence, their destinies. The 



WOMAN AND ECONOMIC DEPENDENCE 35 

wage-earning woman of today is in a superior position to com- 
mand just treatment from her prospective spouse, and she brings 
to the marriage-state a greater capacity for the management of 
the family income; but there are still left the millions of women 
whose capacity is never tested, because whatever be their in- 
tellectual, spiritual, or social possibilities, they are the recipients 
of charity. The charity may be disguised by the love of the 
devoted husband, but they are still stunted by subservience to a 
patriarchal administration. 

It is not the province of this paper to discuss the methods 
of securing economic independence, but it may be suggested 
briefly that the entrance of woman into the actual economic 
struggle, while it must be granted to any individual woman who 
chooses it, seems undesirable for the race because of the value 
of the prolongation of infancy and the constant availability 
of a mother's care. A system of pensions for mothers might be 
devised, which would recognize their services to the state, and 
which in spite of possible pauperizing effects would be unques- 
tionably superior to the present disregard of woman's economic 
rights. The best proposal, however, seems to have been made 
by Mr. H. G. Wells, in demanding that upon marriage, and 
subsequently on the birth of each child, the father be required 
to take out an insurance policy providing annuities for wife and 
children. 

What are some of the spiritual consequences of woman's 
economic dependence? The majority of women have to marry. 
They have no other alternative. Most of them, happily, wish to 
marry and many of them find appropriate husbands, but there 
is not sufficient opportunity for deliberate choice. The conse- 
quence is that quite innocently, having been trained from infancy 
to take the step, multitudes of women marry and live with men 
whom they do not love, whom they sometimes have never loved. 
It is a hard thought that this is l^alized prostitution, and it 
need not carry the stigma which is often unjustly associated with 
professional prostitution. There can scarcely be a stigma when 
the victims are innocent The fact remains and its moral conse- 
quences are unavoidable. It means that a woman has sold her- 



36 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

self, although her early training and conventional morality may 
keep her pure in mind and otherwise blameless in conduct. There 
is no escape from the distorted view of life which this entails. 
One of its inevitable consequences is the subjection of woman 
to the physical mastery of man in ways in which untutored 
woman freely acquiesces, but not without moral anguish which 
would be quite incomprehensible to the unsophisticated husbands, 
who regard themselves as wholly generous. If for no other 
reason, l^alized remuneration for housekeeping, child-birth, and 
child-rearing, is necessary, to remove the temptation of a virtuous 
woman to sell herself for life to one man. While thus escap- 
ing promiscuity, they still relinquish the control over their own 
bodies. 

Another spiritual result of economic dependence is even more 
conspicuous because ubiquitous. Woman's chief moral defect 
is her method of circumlocution, forced upon her by her being 
compelled to make sex fimctions economic functions (as Mrs. 
Gilman has so forcibly stated). Whether it is during the court- 
ing illusion or in rifling her husband's pockets (which a sober 
American judge justifies) or in accomplishing benefits for him 
in subtle ways beyond his dull masculine comprehension, she 
is all the time perfecting the arts of hypocrisy. It is sufficiently 
serious that woman's character should bear this blemish, without 
a premium being put upon it by having it regarded as her chief 
charm. This method of indirection is becoming increasingly 
obnoxious as the larger social opportunities today demand for 
their satisfactory performance political activity. Women are 
not only engaged in innumerable social labors made possible 
by their advancing education and leisure, but they are now ex- 
pected to perform many social obligations in spite of the constant 
difficulty of social reconstruction without political expression. 
In this country this handicap is due of course in part to the 
confused conception of the state in the untrained political minds 
of men. So long as the state is considered a thing apart, political 
action will be differentiated from social action. Aside from this, 
woman's social labors are doubled by the expectation that she 
will either accomplish them by clumsy and laborious voluntary 



WOMAN AND ECONOMIC DEPENDENCE 37 

means, or persuade men to aid her through their exclusive politi- 
cal prerogatives. The evidence that this political limitation is 
due in part to economic dependence, is shown in the frequent 
argiunent that tax-paying women should vote. It is manifest 
that if women were economically independent, political inde- 
pendence could not be delayed. 

The handicap on fellowship of economic dependence is 
another of its defects. There is little camaraderie between men 
and women, even when married. This is partly temperamental ; 
some people cannot be confidential with one another, but it is 
primarily due to the husband's having economic functions, the 
wife sex functions. The beginnings of marital unrest are found 
chiefly in the concealment of a man's thoughts due to his con- 
viction that the dependent domestic creature who shares his 
home has had no training to share his larger economic experi- 
ences. Even the problems of sex, the right of a woman to 
control her life, the preparation of children for the revelation 
of the mysteries of life, are discussed with less frankness because 
of the instinctive feeling of the economic master that new and 
unconventional modes of thinking disturb the economic and 
social order. The consequences of economic freedom, of which 
every man dreams, cannot be less for woman than for man. 
They would in fact be of mutual benefit. If man can be brought 
to. see the imdesirability of the power of man over woman, a 
power enjoyed by the possession of money, we may then bring 
him to desire the removal of the power of money over man. 
The woman's cause is man's : they rise or sink 
Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free: 
For she that out of Lethe scales with man 
The shining steps of Nature, shares with man 
His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal, 
Stays all the fair young planet in her hands — 
If she be small, slight-natured, miserable, 
How shall men grow? 

Let her make herself her own 
To give or keep, to live and learn and be 
All that not harms distinctive womanhood. 
For woman is not undeveloped man, 
But diverse: could we make her as the man. 



38 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

Sweet love were slain : his dearest bond is this, 

Not like to like, but like in difference. 

Yet in the long years liker must they grow ; 

The man be more of woman, she of man ; 

He gain in sweetness and in moral height, 

Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world; 

She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care. 

Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind. 

And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, 

Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers, 

Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, 

Self-reverent each, and reverencing each. 

Distinct in individualities. 

But like each other, even as those who love. 



DISCUSSION 
Dr. I. M. RuBiNow, U. S. Bxjkeau of Labor 

Perhaps it may be best to begin by stating that I was asked to discuss 
not so much the interesting papers which were read this afternoon, as one 
special aspect of the home problem as it may affect present family rela- 
tions — ^the so-called problem of domestic service. I hope it may be unneces- 
sary for me to argue before a sociological assembly that the organization 
of domestic service is very closely connected with the organization of the 
home; that this problem therefore is not beneath the dignity of sociological 
inquiry; and I venture to hope that this time my audacity in approaching 
it will not call forth that scarcely flattering outburst of levity which was 
my fate on a previous occasion. 

It may be argued that after all the home containing domestic servants 
is the abnormal home, and that it therefore does not throw very much light 
upon the general problems: how the present home and how the progressive 
changes in its organization influence family relations. It Is true that in 
only one out of fifteen or sixteen homes, are the burdens of the home 
shifted upon the shoulders of hired assistants. But only thirty or forty 
years ago the proportion in this country was a much greater one, perhaps 
one out of every eight or nine families, and it may be said without exagger- 
ations that the change expressed in these figures is one of the most impor- 
tant changes in modern home life. 

Evidently the change is one that has taken place in the homes of the 
middle class. But that is true of most changes that are taking place in our 
home life at present And more than that, if I may be pardoned for a 
seemingly too sweeping generalization, most of the tendencies which may 
be embraced in that comprehensive term of modem feminism, including the 
protest against the home and the modem family and the economic subju- 
gation of woman, and even our suffragette movement, most of these are 



WOMAN AND ECONOMIC DEPENDENCE 39 

palpably middle-class movements. I am not stating this in any spirit of 
criticism. I am simply stating a fact which may be established by statistical 
analysis. Our literary woman, our club woman, is a middle-class woman, 
and even in the woman's invasion of the productive field it is in the genteel 
middle-class occupations that the tendency is most noticeable. It is in 
teaching and other liberal professions, among typewriters and stenographers, 
clerks and saleswomen, for example, that woman has begim to overcrowd 
the market. It is in the middle class, not in the upper leisure class, and not 
among the proletarians, that the protest against the old home, and woman's 
position in it, has become strongest. The problem of domestic service is 
back of a great part of this movement. 

For what is this so-much-ridiculed problem of domestic service? It 
is the labor problem of our homes. The difficulty of solving this problem 
for the employer, the difficulty of obtaining efficient and cheap help (with 
the emphasis upon cheap), has attracted the attention of our women to the 
unsatisfactory organization of the home. The sad necessity of performing 
this labor, the inability of shifting it to other hired shoulders, drives the 
middle-class woman away from home, and creates the middle-class ideal of 
the independent spinster. In general it may be stated that the technical 
organization of the home has improved vastly during the last half century 
for the proletarian woman, while it has not been quick nor great enough 
to compensate the middle-class woman for the shifting of the burden back 
upon her own shoulders. 

One patent fact which makes a "problem" of the recalcitrant servant 
girl is the pecuilar condition of labor in this particular field. The demand 
is greater than the supply, even when the labor market Is as overcrowded 
as it was during the recent crisis. Of course there is an adjustment of 
demand and supply by means of a constantly rising wage, but the constant 
complaint of our housewives amply demonstrate that the adjustment is far 
from a satisfactory one. 

Now, what is the cause of this maladjustment? The differential 
advantage of the house-slave in her pay as compared with other more 
genteel occupations is greatly exaggerated. Yet some differential exists. 
Nevertheless, it is increasingly difficult to keep back the current which 
drives the working-woman from domestic employment into the factory, 
shop, or store. 

The so-called social stigma which attaches to domestic service has often 
been pointed out as the main cause of the dislike for the employment But 
this social stigma is itself the result of the material conditions of domestic 
service: the indeterminate and excessive working hours; the forced attach- 
ment of the servant to the employer's household, and the resultant depriva- 
tion of personal liberty, and the impossibility of personal life. The working- 
girl prefers the factory to the kitchen for the reason that, paradoxical as it 
may seem, employment in the factory may lead sooner to marriage, a home, 



40 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

and a family, while employment in a stranger's home is an efficient barrier 
and not a step to a home of one's own. 

It has been well said that these peculiar conditions are themselves the 
results of an underlying cause— that in domestic service it is the person 
who is hired and not distinctively the labor of the person. In this feature 
domestic service differs radically from other fields of wage-work. Yet it 
must not be forgotten that this distinctive characteristic of the wage- 
contract in domestic service is not new. It is simply the survival of a labor- 
contract which was universal before the advent of modern capitalism, and 
which continued even during the earlier stages of that era. If it has sur- 
vived longer in domestic service than in industry or commerce, it was 
because of the lack of technical progress in the organization of the home, 
in the methods of home life. The care of the home is proverbially a 
matter of such difficulty that, as the old saying goes, a woman's work is 
never done. 

The truth of this scarcely needs any demonstration. The suggestion 
which I dared to make a year ago, that the problem of domestic service 
will never be solved until we have a legal regulation of the hours of 
domestic servants, called forth a storm of protest in the metropolitan press, 
the tenor of which was that it is impossible to squeeze all housework 
within the compass of eight hours. Some thirty or forty years ago a 
twelve or fourteen hours' limit would have been considered just as 
impossible. 

Now, then, why has there been insufficient technical progress in the 
organization of the home? The answer is not at all difficult The home 
has for many centuries had the enormous supply of labor-power of almost 
the entire female population for which there was no demand in the indus- 
trial field. A cheap supply of labor has always been the greatest obstacle 
to technical progress. As the New York Tribune has put it: "While 
our wives, mothers, sisters, and unappropriated aunts did all our domestic 
work, there was no need to think of technical progress." But conditions 
are changing rapidly. The increased demand for industrial and com- 
mercial female wage-labor has shortened the supply of female energy in the 
kitchen, and as a result we have the problem of domestic service, which 
thus appears simply as a phase in the larger problem of woman-labor— 
aye, of the entire organization of modem industry and commerce. Fewer 
women are ready to enter domestic service. 

Now, what are the social influences of these conditions? In other 
words, what is the influence of the despised servant girl upon the evolu- 
tion of the home? First, as already pointed out, an increasing number of 
women of the middle class are forced to remain in, or go back to, the 
kitchen. Probably a greater proportion of middle-class women are forced 
to get along without domestic help in this country than in any other civi- 
lized part of the world. The domestic virtues, arts, and accomplishments 



WOMAN AND ECONOMIC DEPENDENCE 41 

of the average American middle-class woman are perhaps greater than 
those of women of other nationalities. But to a great extent they are due 
to the recalcitrant servant girl; or rather, to her absence. Of course this 
does not fail to call forth considerable protest. The growing intellectual 
development of the middle-class woman makes her find the eternal drudgery 
of the home more objectionable. Hence the discussion of the organiza- 
tion of the home. If our own wives and sisters find this meeting so very 
interesting, it is not with them (nor with us, for that matter) a problem 
of purely academic interest. It is the expensive servant girl, more than 
any other factor, that gives rise to the complaining middle-class wife. 

Complaints, provided they are reasonable, are a truly progressive power. 
They will force, they are even now forcing, inventive genius into the 
virgin field of domestic work, of home life organization; and under the 
influence of this new stimulus the home life of tomorrow will be as unlike 
the home life of yesterday as the twentieth-century flyer is unlike the 
methods of transportation of a hundred years ago. 

Of course, a sociologist appreciates the danger of foretelling the future 
of any institution. But Mrs. Oilman has pointed out some very plausible 
and necessary changes. It is almost a self-evident proposition that the 
elimination of the so-called **home industries" will continue. The middle- 
class woman who, when deprived of the domestic servant, forces this 
prdbess, is the first to profit by it But the advantages of industrial 
progress finally percolate to all industrial groups. While the total elimi- 
nation of all home work may perhaps be relegated to the dim future, 
speculations upon which are not profitable, surely the technical progress of 
the home (a point which Mrs. Oilman has seemingly missed) does not 
consist entirely in the elimination of home work. Certain functions are, 
on the contrary, reaching back to the home for the sake of comfort and 
economy of time. They are enabled to enter the home because of the 
work of inventive genius, for instance, the bathtub, the chafing-dish, the 
safety razor, the patent shoe polish. Besides, in constructing the picture 
of the future home, a large cosmopolitan city must not be taken as a 
standard. What is possible in New York will appear a complete Utopia 
in a rural community. This is especially true of the pet ideal of Mrs. 
Oilman — ^the complete elimination of food-preparation from the home. 

Nothing appeals to me more strongly than Mrs. Oilman's eloquent plea 
for the neglected child in the modern home. Perhaps her pessimism is 
somewhat exaggerated. Our institutions for orphans do not show any 
smaller infant mortality than our homes. Nor are the causes of this infant 
mortality essential to the principles of our home organization. Better 
wages for the father, better education for the mother would save millions 
of children's lives. Nevertheless, Mrs. Oilman's plea is a strong and a 
convincing one. 

What is the logical outcome of the plea? It is true that the child is 



42 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

the central purpose of the home. The home is not, nor wHl it be in the 
future, mainly "a place where the man has his meals cooked and served 
by a woman." There are thousands of married couples who purchase their 
meals and wait for a home until there is a child. But the necessities of 
child-rearing demand a home of some sort. Thus a home will ever mean 
a place or rather an institution, where the interests of the child will be 
paramount — an institution requiring a considerable amount of effort, and 
let us hope that it will be an institution that is self-sufficient, without the 
wasteful employment of domestic help. I am speaking of the normal home, 
and not the exceptional one. Who then will contribute the necessary 
effort of that home? In pursuit of that evanescent ideal of absolute 
equality of man and woman, it may be urged that the effort should be 
divided between both parties to the marriage contract. But the demand for 
woman's economic independence as made by the feminist movement of today 
is a demand for independence under present economic conditions. 

Let us then deal with stern reality and see what the demand means to the 
working-class woman, the working-class child, and the worldn^-dass family. 
To the middle-class woman it means a profession, a scientific or a literary 
career, social life, the possibility of earning fame or at least a reputation, 
and last but not least, the possibility of transferring the drudgery of the 
home upon other shoulders. To the working-woman it means none of 
these desirable things. It may mean very long hours, imhygienic work, 
low wages — ^many of these things in addition to the required minimtmi of 
housework — and it certainly means neglect of children, even more than the 
neglect of the husband's comfort. For this very good reason the working- 
woman, the working-man's wife, refuses to grow enthusiastic over the 
middle-class ideal of economic independence. It is a grave question whether 
on the whole those families are better off financially where the wife is 
forced to sell her labor-power. And I dare say economists are agreed that 
if the man's wages were not required to carry the entire burden of the 
support of the entire family, they would correspondingly fall None of the 
members of the southern negro's family are better off because the woman 
is economically independent And above all, the child-mortality is greater. 
Under the present industrial organization, the proletarian woman has 
nothing to gain and the proletarian child a grczt deal to lose, by this sort 
of economic independence. 

Mrs. Gilman declares it is a productive waste "to segregate half of the 
productive energy of the world and use it in private service of tlie crudest 
sort." It is with this point of view that I must take issue, and defend the 
married woman against the accusation of the feminists. Do we think of 
the services of the trained nurse as services of the crudest sort? Is the 
proper independent care of the individual child — care that cannot be given 
without proper knowledge and proper love — an economic waste? Or is it 
not the greatest economic service? It is a serious economic fallacy to 



WOMAN AND ECONOMIC DEPENDENCE 43 

speak of the married woman and mother as only a consumer. The working- 
man's wages do not even now pay the entire cost of supporting the family. 
His earnings do not even now pay for all the consumption goods needed 
in the household. They are enough to purchase the raw materials out of 
which the consumption goods are manufactured and services such as 
cleanliness and comfort are created. While these are not paid for, they 
have a distinct commercial value. They need not be paid for, simply 
because we are supposed to have in the family a social unit of voluntary 
co-operation, based upon mutual affection or at least attachment, . and 
common love of offspring. In short, we cannot claim in one and the same 
breath that the woman is overworked, and that she is not a productive 
worker, as long as the work she does is socially necessary. 

To sum up: It seems to me there is now a plain tendency not to have 
a home unless there are children in the family, or rather, unless there is a 
family — for a family without 'children is a family in name only. And 
as all other economic functions of the home are gradually reduced, to 
give more space to child-culture, to intelligent, efficient child-culture, the 
woman will stay in her home to fulfil her natural function; and when I 
say, "natural function," I am simply following Mrs. Gilman in reducing the 
social problems to their original biological elements. For far back of the 
human race the female has been not only the main genetic factor of repro- 
duction, but also the social factor of child-rearing. 

All women are not mothers; and for those who are, the period of 
child-rearing is limited. But while there are children to rear, and, with 
the decreasing birth-rate, no children to lose, society has nothing to gain 
by forcing the mother to add to the wealth of marketable goods. The 
dearth of marketable goods is not the great problem of modern industrial 
society. What we need is a standard of earnings which will enable a man 
to support a family, a standard of home-organization which will enable 
us to reduce the necessary work so that one person can do it pleasantly and 
intelligently, a standard of education for the mother which will make her 
efficient in home-building and child-culture, and perhaps a standard of 
training for the man which will teach him to appreciate the important , 
work of child-culture, and the joys of parental success,. 



Professor Marion Talbot, University of Chicago 
I wish to call to your attention certain modifications in education 
which I believe are demanded if the home and the family are to fulfil their 
true function. 

When the home was the skilled workshop, when father, mother, and 
children jointly contributed to the making of the home in its material 
aspect, there was constant opportunity for the training of the child in many 
of his activities. The child now has to leave his home for a large part of 
his training, physical, mental, socal, and religious. With the disappearance of 



44 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

household industries or their relegation to the hands of the unskilled for- 
eigner, we are compelled to introduce into the school curriculum matter 
and methods which will give the child some degree of command over his 
physical environment and we have as yet only made a beginning in filling up 
the gap. In spite of the satisfaction and comfort which come with the 
modern city house, heated, lighted, drained, furnished with water, food, 
and clothing at cost of little effort, many a parent longs for the "chore," 
the household industry, as a means of training his child in usefulness and 
efficiency. The gymnasium, the dancing school, the club, the Sunday school, 
and various outside agencies have come to take the place vacated in the 
child's life through the changes wrought in the home by the conditions of 
modern life. 

The removal of household industries has changed the members of the 
family from producers to consumers, but education for the latter function 
is not yet generally recognized as necessary. Even the colleges are very 
reluctantly opening their curricula to courses for women bearing on this 
extremely important modern function of the housekeeper. 

Under the former industrial system the father shared much more largely 
than at present in the life and training of the child. The part which he 
now plays is often so small as to give rise to a series of humorous tales 
with the child's ignorance of his father as the central theme. A lessening 
of the so-called feminization of the schools by replacing women with men 
teachers is but a sorry remedy for the difficulty. Under that system also 
community of interest and occupation served to develop in the group a 
sense of the value of the family as an agency for the protection and care 
of the young and for the growth of the more personal moral characteristics 
of the human being. 

With fathers absent from the home and with communal control of 
sanitary and civic matters have gone many opportunities for training chil- 
dren to assume responsibility in matters leading to the good citizenship 
demanded in public affairs. Obedience to law, respect for authority, intelli- 
gent interest in impersonal activities find little opportunity for expression 
and what little there is is seldom used. 

These aspects of the subject are important and are fortunately receiv- 
ing the attention of students of society, of teachers, and, in some few cases, 
of the parents themselves. There is, however, another aspect which though 
more important is receiving the attention of but few people. 

As has been pointed out, "the family has two functions, to afford an 
opportunity for eliciting the qualities of affection and character which can- 
not be displayed at all in the larger group, and it is a training for future 
members of the larger group in those qualities of disposition and character 
which are essential to citizenship." Mrs. Gilman has rightly stated that the 
father and mother must work together for its interests. Her plea for 
enriched intellectual life, larger social usefulness, and economic independ- 



WOMAN AND ECONOMIC DEPENDENCE 45 

ence for women has as its aim not only to secure greater happiness and 
satisfaction for the individual herself, but to enable her to bring "to bear 
upon her proper problems, maternity and child-culture, a larger wisdom 
than she now possesses." I would add to this the imperative social demand 
that men be fitted for the duties of husband and father. The wife and 
mother alone cannot secure the permanence and well-being of the family 
in all its many essentials besides pecuniary prosperity, even if she. is 
given intellectual opportunity and economic independence. I believe that 
quite as many American homes are suffering from the incapacity of hus- 
bands and fathers to contribute their share to the family life as from the 
attempt of wives and mothers to develop their individuality. Race suicide 
and divorce are symptoms of a social disorder, doubtless very grave and 
certainly very evident, whose remedy, in my opinion, lies in the direction of 
training both boys and girls for parenthood. 

Modem pedagogy is urging the enrichment of the school curriculum for 
boys by teaching them social and industrial history, practical economics, 
civics, the organization of society, and financial methods, even if this involves 
the withdrawal of the older disciplinary and cultural studies. Business 
success is the aim in view. Is it not true that we should declare that the 
boy should be trained for his other duties in life? In spite of the pro- 
nunciamentos of chief executives and the higher clergy, I am firmly per- 
suaded, on the evidence of physicians and of social investigators, that 
men are more responsible than women for the decline in the birth-rate. 
If boys were taught the principles of social hygiene and their part in main- 
taining life upon high levels, I can but believe that with this increased 
knowledge their moral natures would be aroused and strengthened and the 
difficulties by which all teachers who deal with young boys are baffled 
would largely disappear. 

Without analogous training for girls we cannot expect that even 
those conditions for which Mrs. Gilman pleads will necessarily produce 
good mothers. In a condition of economic independence and intellectual and 
social freedom, maternity will claim its just place in the interests of a 
liberated woman only if, as a child, she is made to understand what the 
end of this function is and its dignity has been impressed upon her mind. 
Wifehood and motherhood are too often now the price of escape from a 
certain kind of slavery to parents and from bondage to conventionality. 

It is needless to say that I realize how wise and sympathetic the parents 
and teachers who give this knowledge must be. It is time, however, for 
the student of the family to say to the educator that the data for this kind 
of instruction are available and must be put to use. It is no longer 
sufficient to think of the boy in the light of his future trade or profession, 
or even as a citizen, nor of the girl simply as a married woman, or even 
trained in some independent vocation. Throughout all their training must 
run the idea of their high function — ^that of parenthood. 



THE RELATIONS OF SOCIAL DISEASES TO THE 

FAMILY 



PRINCE A. MORROW, A-M^ M.D. 
66 W. Fortieth Street, New York City, N. Y. 



It is but a truism to state that the welfare of the family under- 
lies the welfare of society : Whatever injuriously affects this imit 
of our social organization, reacts unfavorably upon the collective 
social body. 

Marriage was instituted for the purpose of regularizing 
sexual relations between men and women, and the creation, care, 
and maintenance of children. However individualistic the mo- 
tives that influence men and women to matrimony, the civil object 
of marriage is the creation of the family — the raising of children. 
From the socio-political standpoint children are the only excuse 
for marriage — not offspring merely, but children bom in condi- 
tions of vitality, health, and physical vigor, and capable of becom- 
ing useful citizens to the state. 

Since the most valuable asset of a nation consists in healthy, 
capable citizens, the conservation of the health and productive 
energy of the family is essential to the prosperity, and existence 
even, of human society. The question of health and disease as 
affecting the family has never received adequate consideration. 
The state recognizes the fundamental importance of this institu- 
tion as the condition of social preservation, and has surrounded 
marriage with the safeguards of law and morality; but the state 
takes no cognizance of the health of the contracting parties: it 
makes no provision against the introduction of diseases which 
may wreck the health of the wife and mother and engender a 
vast mass of disease and misery in the descendants. 

Modem science has shown us that most diseases are of germ 
origin, and are spread by contact of individuals. The ordinary 
relations of family life afford exceptional opportunities for con- 
tagious contacts. So common is this mode of spread that certain 

46 



SOCIAL DISEASES AND THE FAMILY 47 

diseases such as tuberculosis, leprosy, etc., are often spoken of as 
"family diseases." 

The class of diseases which form the subject of this paper, I 
have termed "social diseases" from their origin in the social evil. 
While they are commonly communicated in that relation between 
the sexes ordained by nature for the continuation of the race, 
they may be spread in the ordinary intimacies of family and social 
life — B, syphilitic child in a household, for example, may be the 
source of ninnerous contaminations : It may infect its nurse and 
other members of the family, and they in turn may inf eci others ; 
veritable epidemics of syphilis have originated in this way. 

A case of gonococcus infection in the family may likewise be 
the source of multiple contagions ; the ophthalmia, which blots out 
the eyes of babies, may be commimicated to other children, the 
nurse, or attendants. Another specific infection of young girls, 
due to the gonococcus, often takes on the proportions of extensive 
epidemics. In the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of New York, in 1896, 
65 cases of infection were traceable to one child. In the Babies 
Hospital of New York in 1903, 55 children were infected, and 
in 1904 there were 46 cases. In the epidemic of Posen, 236 
schoolgirls from 6 to 14 years were infected from a bathing- 
house where two or more children used the same bathtub. It is 
this quality of expansiveness, this capacity of morbid irradiation 
through family and social life, that gives to these diseases their 
superior significance as a social danger. 

The significance of disease in general is measured by its 
effect upon the health and life of the individual ; but the dangers 
of this class of diseases are not limited to the individual, nor yet 
to the parents ; they extend to the children, and through them to 
society at large. 

The special significance of social diseases as a peril to the 
family comes from the fact that they specifically affect the system 
of generation, sterilizing the procreative capacity, or so devitaliz- 
ing the primordial cells that the product of conception is blighted 
in its development, and the office of maternity desecrated by the 
bringing forth of tainted, diseased, or dead children. The 
physical interests of the race demand that the springs of heredity 



48 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

be kept pure and undefiled. Certainly no more important problem 
can engage the thoughtful attention of sociologists than the pro- 
tection of the family from diseases which damage or destroy that 
function to which the life of the human race is entrusted. 

In the further consideration of this subject, reference will 
be made to the introduction of these diseases into the family, the 
frequency of marital contamination, and the resulting dangers to 
the wife, to the offspring, to society, and finally, remedial meas- 
ures. 

I. How are these disease.s introduced into married life? — 
At first glance it would appear somewhat incongruous to 
associate a class of infections which in popular estimation always 
bear the stamp of immorality, with a social institution which 
typifies our highest conception of virtue. Unfortimatdy mar- 
riage does not always prove that "asylum pure and chaste," into 
which diseases of vice cannot enter. On the contrary, thousands 
of pure young women find in this relation, legitimatized by the 
state and sanctioned by the church, as honorable and virtuous, not 
a safeguard against these infections, but a snare for their entrap- 
ment. The explanation is not far to seek. 

A large proportion of men contract these diseases either be- 
fore or after marriage, and carry the infection into the family. 
The conditions of married life render the wife a helpless victim. 
To quote a paragraph from my book on Social Diseases and 
Marriage: 

The Vinculum Matrimonii is a chain which binds and fetters the woman 
completely, making her the passive recipient of the germs of any sexual 
disease her husband may harbor. On her wedding night she may, and 
often does, receive unsuspectingly the poison of a disease which may 
seriously affect her health and kill her children; or by extinguishing her 
capacity of conception, may sweep away all the most cherished hopes and 
aspirations of married life. She is an ''innocent" in every sense of the 
word. She is incapable of foreseeing, powerless to prevent this injury. 
She often pays with her life for her blind confidence :n the man who, 
ignorantly or carelessly, passes over to her a disease he has received from 
a prostitute. 

The only plea that can be urged in extenuation of these crimes 
against pure women is that the men who commit them are, for the 



SOCIAL DISEASES AND THE FAMILY 49 

most part ignorant that they are bearers of contagion, and 
especially ignorant of the terrible consequences to their wives and 
children. For, it is to be understood, these infections are maric- 
edly accentuated in virulence and danger to the wife and mother 
in fulfilling the functions for which marriage was instituted. 

2. The frequency of marital contamination, — ^This frequency 
does not admit of exact mathematical expression. The amount 
of venereal infection in marriage is an unknown and unknowable 
quantity. Few of the innocent victims know or even suspect 
the name or nature of the disease which transforms them from 
healthy women into suffering invalids. The social sentiment 
which ignores the existence of these infections, and professional 
ethics which draws around them the sacred circle of the medical 
secret, unite in protecting them from exposure. 

The proportion of women infected in marriage has been 
variously estimated by different authorities. Whether this pro- 
portion be 5, 10, or 15 per cent, considering the number of 
married women in this country, either of these percentages totals 
up an enormous aggregate. However startling the statement, it 
is nevertheless true, that there is, in the aggregate, more gono- 
coccus infection among virtuous wives than in professional prosti- 
tutes in this country. 

Since the discovery of the gonococcus — the causal agent — 
statistics bearing upon this point have the value of scientific 
accuracy. The specific g^erm may be identified in the inflamma- 
tory lesions it occasions. 

An investigation of the amount of venereal morbidity in New 
York City was undertaken by the Committee of Seven, appointed 
by the New York County Medical Society in 1901. This investi- 
gation had among other objects the tracing of the sources of the 
contagion. From the reply to the circular letters sent out to all 
regular physicians in Greater New York, it appeared that 30 
per cent, of all the women treated for venereal disease in private 
practice in 1900, were contaminated in marriage. The source of 
the infection in those treated in dispensaries and public institu- 
tions could not be traced— doubtless among the poorer and more 



so THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

ignorant classes who are treated in these institutions the propor- 
tion is larger. 

A similar investigation undertaken by the G>mmittee on 
Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, appointed by the Maryland 
State Medical Society in 1907, showed that nearly 40 per cent, 
of the cases of gonococcus infection in women treated in private 
practice in Baltimore, were contaminated in marriage. 

Foumier's statistics of over 10,000 cases of syphilis, including 
women from every walk in life, showed that 20 per cent., or one 
in every five syphilitic women, received the infection from their 
husbands. 

The president of the Gynecological Society, at the meeting of 
the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons in Washing- 
ton, 1907, stated that about 70 per cent, of all the work done by 
specialists in diseases of women in this country, was the result 
of gonococcus infection. 

Brief reference may now be made to the specific effects of 
these diseases upon the family. 

3. Dangers to the wife. — ^We are indebted to gynecologists 
for our knowledge of the specific dangers to the wife and mother, 
from gonococcus infection. To present the most salient of these 
facts in concrete form; 80 per cent, of all deaths due to in- 
flammatory diseases peculiar to women, practically all purulent 
inflammations of the tubes and ovaries, and 75 per cent, of all 
special surgical operations performed upon women, are the 
result of gonococcus infection. This does not take into account 
the large number of infected women who are not operated 
upon, but drag out a miserable existence of semi- or complete 
invalidism. 

One of the most common and characteristic results of this 
infection in women is sterility — 50 per cent, of these infected 
women are rendered absolutely and irremedially sterile, while 
a much larger proportion are sterile after the birth of the first 
child; so that one child represents the total fecundity of the 
family. A large proportion of sterile marriages, contrary to 
the popular view, is from incapacity and not of choice. 

The dangers of S)rphilis to the wife are too numerous and 



SOCIAL DISEASES AND THE FAMILY 51 

varied to admit of detailed mention. Her personal risks from 
the disease are all the more serious as her health and resisting 
capacity are impaired by the bearing of dead or diseased children, 
and in addition she is often denied the benefit of prompt specific 
treatment. Incredible as it may appear, many men who infect 
their wives, employ every means to prevent their consulting a 
physician, from the fear that they may in some way learn the 
nature of the infection. The opinion of all specialists is con- 
current upon this point, that women S)rphilized in marriage are 
not, as a rule, sufficiently treated, and it is probably on this 
account that so large a proportion of these women suffer from 
severe tertiary manifestations. 

4. Dangers to the offspring, — ^While gonococcus infection is 
not susceptible of hereditary transmission, it often carries with it 
infective risks to the offspring. From 70 to 80 per cent of the 
ophthalmia which blinds babies is due to this cause — ^besides other 
dangers to the children, one of which has already been referred to. 

S)rphilis is the only disease transmitted to the offspring in full 
virulence — killing them outright or so vitiating the processes of 
nutrition that they come into the world with the mark of death 
upon them, or, if they survive they are condemned to carry 
through life the stigmata of degeneration and disease. Moreover 
they are capable of transmitting the same class of organic defects 
to the third generation. Syphilis thus represents the most potent 
factor in the d^eneration of the race. From 60 to 80 per cent, 
of s)rphilitic children die before being bom or shortly after birth ; 
only one in three or four finally survives ; in some cases the mor- 
tality is 100 per cent., absolutely extinguishing the productivity 
of certain families. And here I may allude to the view which 
looks upon the destruction of these physical weaklings as Nature's 
process for the elimination of the unfit. There is no worse 
sophistry than to attribute to Nature what is clearly due to man's 
criminal ignorance. But for the fact of the s)rphilis of the 
parents these children might have been bom in conditions of 
vitality and physical vigor. 

5. The personal risk of the husband from his disease. — 
There are various complications or sequelae from gonococcus 



52 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

infection which may seriously compromise the health of the 
husband, but which will be passed over in this paper. There is, 
however, one disability createil by the disease, which, by destroy- 
ing his procreative power, may defeat the object for which 
marriage is instituted. Sterility in the male is not an infrequent 
result of this infection. The proportion of non-premeditated 
childless marriages directly due to the husband's incapacity from 
this cause is variously estimated at from 17 to 25 per cent., and, 
as he is also responsible for the sterility of his wife, about 75 per 
cent, of all sterility in married life which is not of choice but of 
incapacity may be traced to the fault of the husband. Lier- 
Ascher's careful statistics place this proportion at 71-2 per cent. 

Another danger to the family comes from the incapacitating 
effect of syphilis upon the husband in his character as head and 
support of the family. The dangers of s)rphilis to the individual 
are measured by its remote rather than by its immediate effects. 
The dreaded manifestations of the disease — the implication of 
organs essential to life and, especially, affections of the central 
nervous system, may not develop until 5, 10, 15, or even 20 years 
later. So it often happens that long after the follies of youth 
have been forgotten, and th3 man has become a husband and 
father, he must pay the penalty for his misdeeds in loco- 
motor-ataxia, tumor of the brain, paralysis, blindness, or other 
affections which are incurable for the most part, entirely in- 
capacitate him as the breadwinner of the family, and may render 
him a charge upon friends or the community. So frequent are 
these delayed penalties that tlie French have a proverb: Cest le 
mari qui paie la dette du gar g on. Unfortunately the wife and 
children are drawn into this vicious circle, and must share the 
punishment. 

6. Social misery and unhappiness. — ^This review of the rela- 
tions of social diseases to the family would be incomplete without 
reference to the domestic misery and unhappiness which flow 
from the introduction of these diseases into married life. En- 
forced childlessness from extinguishment of the procreative 
capacity is often a source of marital unhappiness. The instinct 
of maternity has been implanted, by nature, in every normally 



SOCIAL DISEASES AND THE FAMILY S3 

constituted woman, and many women experience the keenest suf- 
fering when realizing that all the hopes and aspirations which 
center in motherhood and children are doomed to disappointment. 

Social diseases are a frequent cause not only of domestic dis- 
sension, but of disunion of the family. Notwithstanding the 
conspiracy of concealment between the husband and physician, 
women often learn the name and nature of their trouble, which 
not infrequently leads to the breaking-up of the family. The 
number of applications for divorce from this cause, especially in 
the middle and upper classes of society is much larger than is 
commonly supposed. In divorce proceedings, the cause of action 
usually appears under some non-compromising name, such as 
"cruelty," "non-support," "desertion," while the true cause is 
never made public. 

Time will permit only the briefest reference to the economic 
significance of social diseases — ^the blindness, the deaf-mutism, 
the idiocy, and other organic defects engendered by these diseases 
impose an enormous charge upon the state and community for 
the care and maintenance of those afflicted — ^the elimination of 
these diseases would render one-third, possibly one-half, of our 
institutions for defectives unnecessary. 

From this cursory survey of the subject, it is evident that 
social diseases have most important relations with the family. 
They are directly antagonistic to all that the family stands for as 
a social institution — ^they are destructive to its health, its pro- 
ductivity, and its social efficiency. They occasion an enormous 
sacrifice of potential wealth from the loss of citizens to the state. 
Moreover, they distil a double venom, they poison not only the 
health, but the peace, honor, and happiness of the family. Their 
prevention is one of the most pressing problems of social hygiene 
that confronts us at the present day. 

What are the Remedial Measures? — If I have succeeded 
in interesting you in this recital, probably the dominant feeling 
excited is one of surprise that these abuses against the innocent 
and helpless members of society should be possible, and the great 
body of humane people in this country remain indifferent to 
their significance, ignorant of their existence even. Ignorance 



54 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

is the cause, and at the same time the explanation of this in- 
difference. Men carry these infections into the family because 
they do not know ; women suffer ill health, sterility, and mutila- 
tion of their bodies, because they do not know ; society is insen- 
sible to their sufferings because it does not know ; the saving hope 
of the situation lies in letting people know. Publicity of these 
evils, education of the public to their significance, are the prime 
indications. 

The importance of this enlightenment is emphasized by the 
fact that this danger to the family and society has always been 
covered up and concealed. Social diseases furnish the most 
conspicuous example in human history of an evil which flourishes 
in disguise and darkness, and which owes its chief potentiality to 
the very obscurity to which it has been relegated by traditional 
prejudice. This social pestilence has been for centuries installed 
in our midst — ^poisoning the sources of life, sapping the founda- 
tions of our national vitality and vigor, ravaging the home and 
family — ^while society, behind "its seven-folded veil of prudery 
and false modesty," refuses to recognize its existence. 

John Stuart Mill declared that "The diseases of society can 
no more be checked or healed than those of the body, without 
publicly speaking of them." But social sentiment has decreed 
that the "holy silence" upon everything relating to sex or its 
diseases must not be broken. And yet all experience shows that 
diseases communicated in the ordinary relations of family and 
social life cannot be prevented without the co-operation of the 
public, and that the first essential in securing this co-operation is 
the general dissemination of knowledge respecting their extent 
and dangers, and the means by which they are spread. 

This has been signally shown in the present warfare against 
tuberculosis. We have recently witnessed the assemblage in 
Washington of a Congress of Tuberculosis, in which every civil- 
ized country of the globe was represented. Eminent scientists, 
distinguished specialists, prominent la)mien, brought the results 
of their studies, their experience, and their wisdom for the dis- 
cussion of the most effective ways and means of exterminating 
this scourge. I need not remind you that less than two decades 



SOCIAL DISEASES AND THE FAMILY $5 

ago, this "great white plague" existed in our midst, claiming its 
victims by tens and hundreds of thousands, ignored by the sani- 
tary officials, disregarded by the public, or stoically accepted as an 
evil against which it was vain to contend. 

What has wrought this wonderful change in the attitude of 
the profession and the public— rtransforming apathy into interest, 
converting inaction into earnest effort, substituting the energy 
of hope for the impotence of despair? Certainly advances in 
medical science and the more aggressive policy adopted by the 
sanitary authorities have contributed to this change. But it is 
undeniable that the brilliant results thus far achieved in the cam- 
paign against tuberculosis, would .have been impossible without 
the enlightened aid and helpful co-operation of the public 

Physicians have been censured, and perhaps with some jus- 
tice, for their silence in regard to matters which so vitally concern 
the interests of the family ; but a change has come over the spirit 
and practice of the medical profession. The genius of modem 
medicine is essentially in the direction of popularizing hygienic 
knowledge; the medical profession is perfectly willing to share 
its knowledge, but it cannot reach the public to any effective 
extent. The channels of communication with the public which 
serve for its enlightenment are closed against this knowledge. 
The responsibility now rests with those who control the educa- 
tional agencies of our social life. 

Other measures for safeguarding the family from these dis- 
eases may be briefly referred to. 

I. Sanitary safeguards. — ^Although social diseases are due to 
microbic invasion, their prevention is not a purely sanitary prob- 
lem. Sanitary measures are directed to the correction of the 
causes of disease and their modes of spread. The causes of social 
diseases reside in social conditions which lie entirely without the 
pale of sanitary control and their commimicative mode, en- 
trenched in the stronghold of privacy, cannot be reached. Be- 
sides, sanitary measures are chiefly concerned with environmental 
conditions which cannot be controlled by the individual. The 
distinctive peculiarity of this special class of diseases is that they 
are communicated by the voluntary acts of individuals. But 



56 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

while they are essentially voluntary infections, they are for the 
most part, ignorant infections. 

It might at first glance appear that the most effective pre- 
ventive would be the enlightenment of the individual patient by 
his physician; but as a matter of fact comparatively few men 
consult physicians as to their physical fitness for marriage and 
parentage, so that the opportunities for this prophylactic work 
are comparatively restricted. Besides, many men, to the discredit 
of human nature be it said, when warned by the physician of the 
danger of marrying with an uncured sexual disease, nevertheless 
for sordid or selfish reasons, take the risk, or, rather, subject the 
women they marry to the risk of infection. Some men are utterly 
unteachable, while others, being taught, are flagrantly careless in 
the matter of spreading disease. Evidently if enlightenment is 
to have its full force and efficacy as a preventive measure, it must 
be general ; it must extend to the collectivity. 

2. Legal safeguards, — Since experience shows that the en- 
lightenment now available will not prove an infallible corrective 
of these crimes against the family, the question arises whether the 
state, through its instrument, the law, can more effectively inter- 
vene in their prevention. 

Medical examination of the contracting parties, and the 
furnishing of a certificate of freedom from contagious sexual 
disease as a condition of license to marry, has been proposed 
as a solution of the problem. To many not familiar with 
the practical difficulties in the way, this measure commends 
itself. It would be difficult to enact a law which does not apply 
to both sexes, but so far as the woman is concerned such examina- 
tion is entirely unnecessary, as women almost never introduce 
these infections into marriage; besides, many sensitive, refined 
women would rather forego marriage than be subjected to a 
physical examination which they would regard as an outrage upon 
their modesty, and an indignity to their persons. 

Further, such a law, to be effective, must be general in all the 
states, otherwise couples wishing to marry would cross over the 
borders of a neighboring state where this law was not in force. 
There are other practical objections arising from the oftentimes 



SOCIAL DISEASES AND THE FAMILY 57 

latent character of these diseases, and the impossibility of making 
a diagnosis without prolonged observation, which, with other 
defects that cannot be here considered, would defeat the purpose 
of such a law. 

Another proposed measure is the enactment of a law imposing 
penal responsibility for the introduction of these infections into 
marriage. Such a law would be equitable and just, as there can 
be no greater injury to the corporeal integrity of an individual 
than infection with venereal disease. Unfortunately the essential 
condition of the law's intervention is that the injury shall already 
have been received ; besides, the injured party must be the com- 
plainant, appear in open court, and if the charge is substantiated, 
be publicly branded as the bearer of a shameful disease. It is 
evident that few self-respecting women would avail themselves 
of its doubtful benefits. The only advantage of such a law upon 
the statute books would be its educational value, rather than its 
frequent enforcement. 

Eminent jurists who have studied this subject declare it 
doubtful whether additional legal guarantees for the safeguard- 
ing of marriage can be furnished by the state. 

3. Ethical safeguards. — ^The family is not only the source of 
the life of the nation, but the conservator of the morality of the 
race. The moral element in this problem of prevention cannot 
be ignored. Observation shows that men are the responsible 
authors of these social crimes — women the victims. The root 
of the evil is grounded in the double standard of morality. 

In legalizing marriage the law has placed man and woman 
upon the same moral plane of equality, the infidelity of either 
party constitutes a sufficient ground for divorce; but social con- 
vention has created one standard of morals for men, another 
for women. This code which was constructed to conform with 
man's sensual inclinations, while allowing him the largest sexual 
liberty, requires of the woman chastity before marriage, and 
absolute fidelity after marriage. This disparity in moral obliga- 
tions has been justified by tradition on the ground of a physio- 
logical difference between men and women. In the opinion of 
the wisest and best men of the medical profession, the double 



S8 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

Standard of morality rests upon a false physiological foundation. 
The doctrine of the so-called "sexual necessity" for men, is a 
physiological fallacy; it receives no shadow of support from the 
teachings of science, and is disproved by the experience of thou- 
sands. From a purely physiological standpoint there is no more 
necessity for a young man to "sow his wild oats" than for 
his sister to do the same. There is every reason to believe 
that the relative chastity of men and women is due, not to a 
physiological difference, but to a difference in education and 
moral training. 

These crimes against the family will continue until women 
know, as they have a perfect right to know, the facts which so 
vitally concern their own health and the health and lives of their 
children. When they know that the standard of morality they 
now tolerate in the men they marry is the responsible cause, the 
woman will demand of the man she receives as her husband and 
the potential father of her children, the same moral standard 
which the man has always required of the woman he takes as his 
wife. The emancipation of woman will never be complete until 
she is freed from the shackles of a traditional code, based upon 
the ethical heresy that one half of humanity has imperious duties 
which the other half may repudiate or disclaim. The result will 
be not to debase woman, but to uplift man to her higher standard. 

Personally I believe that women will not be left to work out 
their own salvation alone. Every moral reform comes from 
the exposure of human suffering. We have seen that the prac- 
tical effect of this unilateral code is, that in condemning the inno- 
cent to suffer for the sins of the guilty, it violates the principles of 
justice and humanity. Considerations of humanity demand that 
women, in fulfilling their mission as child-bearers of the race, 
should not be exposed to diseases which soil them, which poison 
them, and which kill them; justice to the unborn demands that 
they should not be robbed of their rightful heritage of vitality, 
health, and vigor. When the public is fully enlightened as to the 
significance of these dangers to the family, and their injury to 
the highest interests of human society, I believe that public 
opinion, which is the strongest force in the evolution of the 



SOCIAL DISEASES AND THE FAMILY S9 

conscience of the race, will no longer tolerate these evils, nor 
sanction the standard of morals of which they are the outgrowth. 

A final word upon the relations of social diseases to the dis- 
union of the family. These diseases play the sinister role of 
detectives in the household — ^they are les maladies rSvilatriceSy 
often furnishing positive proof of infidelity, which otherwise 
might never have been revealed. The frequency of separation or 
divorce from this cause is far from being suspected by the public. 
It is one of the hidden, imavowable causes, "the shame that can- 
not be named for shame." No other commentary upon the 
intolerable situations created by the introduction of these diseases 
into the family is needed than the fact that so many women, 
lo)ral to the highest ideals of marriage, devoted to home and 
family, are driven to the divorce courts as a refuge. No one can 
condemn a self-respecting woman for separating from a man 
who has dishonored her with a shameful disease. 

The evils that result from divorce have been fully exposed; 
it is time to expose evils that cause divorce ; to endeavor to pre- 
vent divorce by correcting one, at least, of its most fruitful 
causes. While the interests of the social welfare demand the 
conservation of the integrity of the family, it is vain to attempt 
to preserve intact this comer-stone of our social fabric if we 
neglect the destructive forces at work undermining its foundation. 



DISCUSSION 
PsoFESSOK Seligman spoke of the economic aspects of the evil and 
called attention to the great need of publicity. 



PSOFBSSOK A. B. WOLFE^ ObEKUN^ OhIQ 

Dr. Morrow's paper is a terrible revelation of the sinister h)rpocrisy of 
men in their relation to women and in particular to the women they 
promise to love, honor, and cherish; a proof positive, if any were needed, 
that our ideals both of what is manly and womanly need at some points 
violent revision. The problem of the family is in more ways than one the 
problem of women. The ideal we hold of woman and the ideal we hold 
of the family will develop pari passu. So long as our ideal of the strength 
and worth of woman is a low one — as I do not hesitate to say it was until 
Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, and the modem feminists forced 
upon us the beginnings of a reluctant revision — as it is yet in fact with the 



6o THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

great masses of men — so long as woman was regarded mainly as a vehicle 
for sex gratification and a cheap housekeeper combined, so long as it is 
thought that "the noblest thing any woman can do is to be a good wife and 
mother," so long as women are not gladly and consciously recognized by 
men to be a part of the human race as well as bearers of it, that long will 
the ideal of the family leave much to be desired and the actual family 
remain a heavy sociological problem. 

Much has been said in this discussion concerning publicity and educa- 
tion. The problem of venereal diseases, and of the social evil at large, 
will never approach a solution until men fully recognize that the wife or 
the prospective wife — ^that any woman — ^is entitled to just as complete a 
knowledge of these matters as is the male. But so long as women are 
regarded with a vestige of the old "clinging-vine" ideal, as beings who are 
to be "protected" (note the pungent irony of that term in this connection) 
and carefully guarded from knowledge of the world's hard facts, so long 
as yromen themselves fondly place a blind faith in a masculine "chivalry," 
the condescension and subtle contemptuousness of which many of them are 
at present incapable of perceiving, just so long will they be incapable of 
protecting themselves from their male protectors. It will in the future be 
one of the gravest charges the defenders of western civilization will have 
to meet that with all the civilizing and enlightening agencies it had at its 
command it so long allowed its ideal of womanhood to remain so purely a 
negative ideal. Let woman be only "pure" and "innocent," let her only 
guard her "virtue" (or have it guarded for her) against the wiles and 
atUcks of the predatory male, let her at the same time have a pretty face, 
a lithe figure, and a "charming" way, and she was essentially the ideal 
woman. No woman whose chief ideality or virtue consists in purity or 
"innocence" can ever be other than an obstacle in the way of the solution 
of the twin problems of marriage and prostitution. 

When we talk about publicity and education we mean that the social 
consciousness should be opened to these social dangers of contagious vice 
and disease. When, as in this case, the matter in hand concerns women 
as well as men, it behooves us, both men and women, to include women 
in that social consciousness, to recognize that they should have equal part 
with men in the formation and direction of the social consciousness. No 
recent writer on sociology has said a thing more pregnant with significant 
truth than Professor Thomas when he says that women are in the white 
man's world but not of it, and nowhere have I seen that fact more vividly 
illustrated than by the acknowledged effects of the "medical secret" of the 
physician, a man-made bit of professional ethics that sacrifices everything 
— ^wife, children, honor, health, and social welfare — ^to the supposed interest 
of the libertine male, even though he be "to a radiant angel linked." 
Whatever the present legal status of the medical secret, it seems clear that 
that institution could not long survive under the light and fire of a public 



SOCIAL DISEASES AND THE FAMILY 6l 

• 

opinion which women had equal part with men in shaping. For no sane 
woman would consent to the fallacious belief that the sanctity and unity 
of the home is to be maintained on the basis of collusion of husband and 
physician to deceive an ignorant though suffering wife. It may be neces- 
sary that women live more than men in what Professor Patten has called 
a pain-economy, but surely to ask them to live in a fool's paradise at the 
same time is to add insult to injury. There are other stagnant pools than 
simply that of male disease upon which the searchlight of inquiry should 
be turned. It would be well to turn it oftener and with greater intensity 
upon male egotism--upon the androcentricity of society, the root evil of 
which maladjustments in family and sex life are only too often the specific 
manifestations. Even the American Sociological Society, while it is ex- 
tremely fortunate in having women as well as men speakers on its pro- 
grammes, has not entirely escaped the androcentric world-view. 



Mrs. Anna Garlin Spencer, New York City, N. Y. 

Two things are most encouraging to note in connection with this sub- 
ject. One is that the members of the medical profession have for the first 
time come fairly upon the platform of social responsibility in respect to 
these social diseases. Their oath, their tradition of care for the individual 
patient, the sanctity of the medical confessional, have all bound the doctors 
until lately to a purely personal duty in this regard. Gradually the idea of 
saving the social cost of other preventable diseases has deepened and grown, 
until we have boards of health ?nd medical ofiicials of various kinds at 
work to prevent typhoid and other scourges, to segregate and radically 
treat, even at public expense, those ill of contagious disease, in order that 
they may not help to spread the evil; and now tuberculosis is to be brought 
under control. The physician has fallen heir to the position of social 
command once held by the priest; and for the reason that we are all so 
concerned now-a-days with the physical basis of life and of well-being. The 
valuable paper by Dr. Morrow shows us that the "great black plague," a 
preventable and terrible scourge of humanity, is to be proceeded against 
and to be brought under control. And the encouraging thing is that the 
doctors, now recognizing their responsibility of leadership in this matter, 
are giving the public the facts they alone can give and assuming their 
proper place in preventive as well as in ameliorative effort. One can hardly 
realize how great an advance in the sense of social duty this marks in the 
medical profession, unless he remembers that great struggle in England 
over the Contagious Diseases Acts, and the attitude which the doctors took 
in that seven years' fight against the state legalization of prostitution. The 
physicians then generally took the ground of duty to try and save men 
from the consequences of sexual irregularity, while condemning women 
prostitutes to a slavery the most hopeless and most degrading that any 



62 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

class of human beings has ever suffered. The position now taken by Dr. 
Morrow and other physicians in the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophy- 
laxis is that all means for cure and amelioration should be freely accessible 
to all, men and women alike; that the home and innocent wives and chil- 
dren should be protected as far as possible; but that the final and most 
effective measures for wiping out this evil are moral and educational. We 
may congratulate ourselves on this great movement forward of the medical 
profession as one of the largest of social gains. 

The second thing that is cause for congratulation and for hope in 
regard to the curbing of social diseases is the new solidarity of women, and 
the way in which that is working for the protection of the poorer and 
weaker womanhood. Social diseases imply prostitution, and it is the ignorant 
and poor among women who furnish the larger portion of prostitutes. The 
one most effective way to lessen the social evil, and the diseases that it 
causes, would be to make every young girl self-supporting with a living 
wage. And the best, the strongest, the most fortunate womanhood is at 
work to secure that end. By means of trade schools and welfare work and 
leagues of protection and help for the working girl, they are seeking to make 
girls too strong and too fairly paid to be such easy victims as they have 
been. There is a new sex-consciousness, which sometimes shows itself in 
unlovely forms, but which -is really a testimony to social growth, which is 
making women help women. They are no longer willing that the sacred, 
seamless, robe of womanhood shall be torn asunder and one part dedicated 
to honor in the home and the other part given over to dishonor in the dark 
places of sin. This sense of belonging together is new among women but 
it is working toward a higher estimate of potential motherhood and a deeper 
sense of responsibility toward all the weak and poor and ignorant girlhood 
on the part of the women of character and social power. This will mean 
that while the doctors are working in the noble way indicated in Dr. 
Morrow's paper to lessen social diseases, the best womanhood will be work- 
ing more and more to lessen the supply of "abandoned" women whose 
degradation is concerned in those diseases. We ought to protect the home. 
We ought also to protect all youth from that which hurts the home. 



THE INFLUENCE OF INCOME ON STANDARDS OF 

LIFE 



PROFESSOR R. C CHAPIN 
Beloit College^ Beloit, Wis. 



It goes without saying that the standard of living attained 
does not depend simply upon income. The natural environment — 
climate, the free gifts of nature — ^the social environment, whether 
urban or rural, the efficiency of government, the opportunities 
for recreation and education which are provided gratuitously — 
all these have a marked influence upon the plane of life that men 
attain. Furthermore, the actual comfort enjoyed by a given 
family depends hardly less upon the amount of its income than 
upon the wisdom displayed in applying it to the diverse wants 
which it may be made to meet. The woman who "looketh well 
to the ways of her household" is as important a factor in our 
time as she was in the days of King Lemuel. 

But into these wide aspects of the question it is not my busi- 
ness to enter. I shall deal with the influence upon the standard 
of living of income alone, and I purpose to consider the effect 
upon the standard, first, of variations in amount of income; sec- 
ond, of variations in sources of income. I shall draw for illus- 
tration largely upon the results of an investigation into the 
standard of living in New York City carried on in 1907 under 
the direction of a committee of the New York State Conference 
of Charities. Returns were compiled from 391 families of four, 
five, and six persons each, 318 having incomes between $600 
and $1,100. 

/. Variations in amount of income. — It is plain that the 
larger the income, the larger are the possibilities of satisfaction. 
One of the evidences of a general rise of real wages in the nine- 
teenth century is the increase in the number and kind of good 
things that are within reach of the ordinary man, and actually in 
his possession. We know, that is, that the rise of the standard 

63 



64 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

of living so as to include trolley-rides and daily newspapers and 
silver-plated ware must be the result of a general increase in 
family income. But we can go farther than this. Ernst Engel 
has taught us to look at the apportionment of income among the 
principal objects of family expenditure, and to see just how 
changes of income work out in changes in the elements of the 
standard of living — what kind of things are added as income in- 
creases, what are omitted as income falls. 

On the basis of returns from 199 Belgian families, gathered 
in 1855 *^y Ducpetiaux, Engel made out his familiar table of 
percentage expenditures for Saxon families of three income- 
grades. He found that the poorest families, whose income was 
tmder $300 of our money, gave for food 62 per cent, of all that 
they spent. Families having from $450 to $600 spent 55 per 
cent, for food, and those with from $750 to $1,000 spent 50 
per cent, for this purpose. Hence he made his generalizations 
that, as income increased, a less and less part of it was needed for 
food, and that the percentage of expenditure for food was there- 
fore an index of the degree of prosperity attained. He applied 
this standard in a later work to the wretched English peasants 
whose budgets had been collected by Eden in 1797, and found 
that the average of their food-expenditure was 73 per cent of 
their total expenditures. The generalization regarding the tend- 
ency of the food-percentage to diminish as the income increases 
has been verified in many later compilations of family budgets. 
The Report of the United States Bureau of Labor for 1903, for 
instance, finds a decline in food-expenditure from 47 per cent, 
among families having incomes between $400 and $500, to 40 
per cent, for families with incomes between $900 and $1,000. 
Colonel Wright's Massachusetts investigation of 1875 showed a 
decline from 64 per cent, for families having less than $450 a 
year to 51 per cent, for families having over $1,200 a year. 

As the demands of the stomach are more easily met out of 
the larger income, what expenditures are increased to correspond? 
Engel's Saxon tables show a constant percentage for housing and 
for fuel and light, a slight increase for clothing, and a rise in 
the percentage allotted to expenditures outside of immediate 



INCOMES AND STANDARDS OF UFE 65 

physical necessities from 5 to 10 and from 10 to 15 per cent as 
we ascend the income-scale. This indicates that, along with 
somewhat better provision for food and shelter, it is possible for 
the family to indulge in more attractive clothing and household 
furnishings, and to spend something for amusement, for read- 
ing-matter and for minor personal indulgences. 

All reports agree as to the broadening of the plane of living, 
with rising income, in r^;ard to expenditure for the satisfaction 
of these culture-wants. Not all, however, coincide with Engd's 
data in r^^ard to a constant percentage for rent and for clothing. 
Colonel Wright's figures for the United States at large in 1901 
show a nearly constant percentage for rent (17 to 18 per cent.), 
but his Massachusetts report of 1875 shows a decline in the first 
three income-groups from 20 to 15.5 and then to 14 per cent, 
followed by a rise to 17 per cent and a drop to 15 per cent 
Recent investigations in New York, that of Mrs. More in her 
Working-men's Budgets, and that of the Committee of the New 
York Conference, agree in showing a steady falling-off in per- 
centage expenditure for rent with each increase of one hundred 
dollars in income. The percentages found in the latter inquiry 
were 24 for incomes between $600 and $700, and for successive 
income-groups, rising by hundred-dollar stages, 22, 20. 19, 18, 
16— the last for incomes over $1,100. The congestion of popula- 
tion in New York, fortunately exceptional, doubtless accounts in 
part for the fact that in that city house-rent claims one-quarter 
of the six-htmdred-doUar incomes. 

An examination' of the percentages expended for food, hous- 
ing, and other purposes suggests that the proportion of income 
devoted to each of them may not always move in the same direc- 
tion as we pass from one income-group to the next higher. The 
$400 families in the Labor Report oi 1903 spend a higher per- 
centage for food than the $300 families. If the comparison is 
carried far enough upward in the scale of incomes, a point is 
reached in New York where rent ceases to fall off in percentage 
expenditure, and clothing ceases to demand a larger proportion 
than in the group preceding. The fact seems to be that each of 
the three primary wants takes its turn in urging its claims most 



66 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

vociferously and when these have been pacified the desires for the 
things that make life worth living b^n to be heard. In r^ard 
to each class of wants in turn a point of relative saturation is 
reached, and a more adequate satisfaction of the next one becomes 
possible. 

In New York City the most imperative need on the lowest 
incomes is for housing. Some place of shelter must be provided, 
and, however wretched, it will not be cheap. Thirteen dollars a 
month was the average rent paid by seventy-two families whose 
average income was $650. But this amounts to $156 a year, or 
24 per cent, of the total income When the cost of shelter 
demands a quarter of the whole income, food and clothing must 
take what is left. But the accommodations obtained as the mini- 
mtun that can be lived in by the families with $650 a year are 
practically good enough for those with an income one and two 
hundred dollars greater. Seventy-three families whose income 
averaged $846, spent only fourteen dollars a week on the average 
for rent. But this was only 21 per cent, of their larger total 
expenditure. Meanwhile their food percentage was practically 
as high as that of the $650 group (44.3 per cent.), representing 
an increase in average amount expended from $290 to $360. 

In food the point of diminishing percentage was not reached 
until after the one-thousand-dollar line was passed. The food- 
percentage increased, as with the families in the United States 
Labor Report of 1903, on passing from $400 to $500, and from 
$500 to $600. This may be due in part to exaggeration in the 
returns of expenditure for food. In part it was due to the fact 
that until an income of $800 was reached one-third of the 
families were underfed. The proportion of the total food- 
expenditure that was given for animal food increased, and that 
expended for cereal food diminished. The cost of animal food 
comprised 29 per cent, of the total food-bill of the families in 
the six-hundred-dollar income-group, and 32 per cent, of those 
in the one-thousand-dollar group. Cereals dropped correspond- 
ingly from 21 to 17 per cent. The expenditure for alcoholic 
drinks increased, taking into account only those families that 
reported this item, from the average of $27.25, or 4.2 per cent 



INCOMES AND STANDARDS OF UFE 67 

of the total expenditures in the six-hundred-dollar group, to 
$59.96, or 5.2 per cent, in the eleven-hundred-dollar group. 

Clothing comes last of the three to a constant or a diminish- 
ing proportion of the expenditures. In the New York families 
under consideration the percentage expenditure rises slightly with 
each increase of $100 in income until the eleven-hundred-dollar 
group is reached, and thereafter remains constant at about 15 
percent 

The expenditures for other purposes than these three primary 
necessities are kept under until these wants are met By the 
time something like an equilibrium between these three has been 
reached, say at $800 for our New Yoric families, the expenditure 
for recreation, social obligations, care of the health, and all other 
purposes save fuel and light, claims a larger proportion of the 
income. The proportion is i per cent higher at $700 than at 
$600, but at $800 it rises from 14 to 16 per cent, of the total 
expenditure, and continues to increase without sign of stopping. 
That is, the culture-wants are banning to claim their own, 
which, under the necessity of keeping the wolf from the door, 
they could not be permitted to have. 

A striking example of this tendency of subsistence-wants 
to claim the lion's share of all increasing income is found in 
Engel's comparison of the Belgian returns of 1853 with those of 
a similar investigation made in 189 1. At the latter period, 
although the average income had nearly doubled, the expenditure 
for food comprised 65.7 per cent of the total in 1891 as com- 
pared with 64.9 per cent in 1853. In fact, food, clothing, rent, 
and fuel and light consumed 96 per cent, of the income in 1891 
and only 94 per cent in 1853. 

The same general conclusion as to the relative intensity 
of the several classes of wants may be drawn from another 
method of handling the New York returns. A minimum stand- 
ard, as exact as could be determined, was applied to the expendi- 
tures for food, clothing, and housing, and the number of families 
counted in each income-group who came short of the standard. 
For food, the minimum was set at an expenditure at the rate of 
22 cents per man per day, as calculated after the manner made 



68 THE AMERICAN SCCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

familiar by Professor W. O. Atwater in the Bulletins of the 
Department of Agriculture. -This figure was reached, after an 
analysis of one hundred of the family reports, by Dr. Frank P. 
Underbill of Yale University, a competent expert. Professor 
Atwater's estimate on the basis of data gathered in New Yorfe 
City a few years previous, when a lower scale of prices prevailed, 
was from 23 to 25 cents. For housing the minimum was fixed 
at one and one-half persons per room, i. e. not more than six 
persons to four rooms. For clothing the minimum was set at 
an allowance of $100 for the assumed family of five persons; 
expenditures for washing being included in this sum. 

For our present purpose the accuracy of these estimates of 
a minimum requirement for physical efficiency does not concern 
us, but only the variations in the departures from them that 
appear in the several income-groups. Measured by these stand- 
ards, of the families with incomes between $400 and $500 all are 
underfed, 88 per cent, are underclad, 63 per cent, are over- 
crowded. That is, the want of shelter is being satisfied at the 
expense of food and clothing. In the next income-group ($500- 
$600), the underfed are 65 per cent., the underclothed, as before, 
88 per cent., the overcrowded, 71 per cent. In paying more 
attention to the need for food, less attention is paid to shelter. A 
higher rental is paid, but more persons are crowded into the 
accommodations offered. In the next income-gjoup ($600-700) 
the underfed have fallen to 33 per cent., the underclad to 63 
per cent, the overcrowded to 57 per cent. For every income- 
group thereafter, the overcrowded families preponderate over 
both the other classes. Even in the $1,100 income-gjoup 21 per 
cent, are overcrowded, but none underfed and only 6 per cent 
underclad. These figures, taken as a whole, imply that the most 
urgent need at the minimtun income is for shelter, out-clamoring 
not hunger perhaps, but at least the want of adequate food. With 
a larger income a pause can be set to the desire for better hous- 
ing, while more attention is given to the providing of food. With 
an income still larger, of nine hundred dollars and above, the 
deficiencies in diet are supplied, and at ten hundred dollars the 
minimum allowance for clothing has been attained by practically 



INCOMES AND STANDARDS OF UFE 69 

all the families. Not even at this point, however, does the desire 
for adequate housing, at the price which must be paid for it, 
suffice to persuade more than three-fourths of the families to go 
without enough of other things to secure it. 

Another alternative to expansion of expenditures, for what- 
ever purpose, as income increases, is saving. Saving becomes 
easier, as income increases. But the point where savings begin 
is not necessarily the point where a standard even of physical 
efficiency is attained. There :^re families that save at the expense 
not only of comfort, but even of health, and there are families 
that no increase of income would induce to save. Of the under- 
fed families just alluded to, one-half reported a surplus of income 
over expenditure of at least $25; 65 per cent, of the families 
reckoned as underclothed, and 44 per cent, of the overcrowded 
likewise reported such a surplus. When this is compared with 
the percentage of all families that reported a surplus, namely 36.5, 
it seems fair to infer that the desire to save repressed expendi- 
tures to meet actual physical necessities. 

On the other hand, by no means all families on a larger in- 
come preferred saving to spending. Not until $1,300 is reached 
is there a constant increase in the number of families that report 
a surplus of income over expenditures. This indicates that there 
are Micawbers on large incomes as there are misers on small 
incomes, but also that the social influences of New York City, at 
least, encourage adding to the good things included in standards 
of living quite as much as they encourage saving. The propor- 
tion of savers among the Russian and Italian families was found 
to be much higher than amon^ families of more thoroughly 
Americanized stock. 

On the whole the conclusions drawn from the New York 
investigation substantiate the restatement of Engel's "laws" 
given by Stephan Bauer in his article "Konsumtionsbudget" in 
Conrad's Handworterbuch, as follows: 

With increase of income: 

I. The proportion spent for food, especially for vegetable food, falls. 
2. The proportion saved constantly increases. 



^o THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

3. The proportion spent for housing, fuel, light, falls until a certain 
income is reached, then remains constant or increases. 

4. The proportion spent for animal food, drink, clothing, culture, and 
recreation rises until a certain income is reached, then remains constant 
or falls. 

//. Source of Income. — The real standard of life enjoyed by 
a family is profoundly influenced by the sources from which its 
income is derived. To explain, let me make a classification, on 
the basis primarily of amount of income, of the relation of income 
to family life. Let us consider five classes : 

1. The income is so small that the family cannot be main- 
tained, but is broken up. Our charitable societies are only too 
familiar with cases of this kind. The father is incapacitated by 
accident or disease, or the supplementary earnings of other mem- 
bers of the family are cut off — from whatever cause, the income 
is diminished to a point where it is so far below the needs of the 
case that unless liberal relief is given the family must be broken 
up and the children provided for outside of the home. 

2. The income is inadequate to the maintenance of a normal 
standard, but the family is kept together, living on a plane below 
the requirements for the working efficiency of the parents and the 
healthful bringing up of the children. It is possible to maintain 
life for a long time on a diet of bread and tea. Human beings 
can exist although sleeping three or four in a room. Dr. Fore- 
man's budgets of the Washington poor contained instances of 
regular underfeeding for one wedc in each month — the week in 
which the monthly rent had to be paid.. The figures already cited 
regarding underfed and overcrowded families, even on incomes 
of $700 and $800 are evidence that cases of this class are only 
too frequent. The outcome in the long run is the early extinction 
of the family under the attacks of disease, or race deterioration, 
as in the case of the London "hooligan." 

3. The income adequate in amount, but adequate because the 
wages of the father are supplemented by the earnings of his wife 
and children. Such a family may maintain a normal standard, 
providing the children are fairly of working age and are not 
overworked. But where the mother's employment takes her away 



INCOMES AND STANDARDS OF UFE 71 

from the home and where the children are set to work too young, 
the real standard of living is lowered. The family income can- 
not be as wisely expended when the mother is away all day, and 
the addition of outside employment to the woman's domestic 
work makes a burden that often impairs her health. The earlier 
a child goes regularly to work, the more is cut off from his right- 
ful inheritance of opportunity to improve upon his father's 
standard of living. 

4. The income adequate in amount, but made adequate by 
taking in lodgers or boarders. This case is similar to the pre- 
ceding, and the effect upon the solidarity of the family, economic 
considerations aside, is hardly less deplorable. The taking of 
lodgers not only introduces outsiders into the midst of the family, 
but it frequently means an impairment of a normal standard in 
the matter of housing. Recent investigations have brought out 
the facts r^^rding the crowding of many tenements with lodg- 
ers. The relative frequency of the practice is perhaps indicated 
by the fact that one-half of the families included in the investi- 
gation of the New York Conference Committee were taking 
lodgers. The proportion increased with the increase in amount 
paid for rent — ^23 per cent, of families paying from ten to four- 
teen dollars a month for rent took lodgers, but they were taken 
by 62 per cent, of the families paying over sixteen dollars a 
month. The results in overcrowding are shown in the fact that 
70 per cent, of the families having lodgers were reported as 
below our arbitrary standard of housing accommodations. 

5. Families with adequate income, derived from sources such 
that the well-being of the family is not impaired. These families 
are the only ones that can be said to have reached a decent stand- 
ard of living. They are the only ones in which the children have 
a "white man's chance" for the future. They are, for the most 
part, families supported by the father alone, or by children who 
are far enough along to handle their own wages and pay their 
own board into the family treasury. The number of families 
where the father really supports the family is not so large, among 
the wage-earners of our American cities, as is popularly supposed. 
Especially in those occupations where men's wages are not over 



72 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

two dollars a day they are the exception, not the rule. Forty- 
eight of the laborers, teamsters, and garment workers included 
in the New York Committee's report, gave in a family income of 
from eight to ten hundred dollars; but in thirty-eight cases the 
father's earnings were supplemented from other sources. In 
almost every compilation of working-men's budgets that has been 
published in this country, has appeared the same frequency of 
composite incomes among families reporting the higher amounts 
for total income. Further, among the families with composite 
income the proportion of underfed and of families reporting 
deficit is greater than among the whole number of families. This 
means, of course, that the family of a man with a six-hundred- 
dollar wage can maintain a standard that calls for an expenditure 
of eight hundred dollars only by endangering the integrity of 
the family life by taking lodgers or sending mother and children 
out to work. In other words the standard of wages does not 
reach the standard of living. 

The influence of income on standard of living, therefore, may 
be traced in reference both to amount and sources of income. As 
the amount of income increases expenditures increase most 
rapidly along the line of the strongest desire, unsatisfied hitherto. 
This desire is likely to be the desire for better food, then for 
better clothing and shelter, until what may be called a saturation 
point for these essentials has been reached. As this point is 
approached, expenditures for things not connected with immedi- 
ate material subsistence claim a larger share of the income, and 
finally increase most rapidly of all. A minimum point is fixed by 
the environment natural and social. The education of the particu- 
lar family, the custom of its social equals, are the forces that 
determine at what point above the subsistence minimum the in- 
come will be diverted from physical satisfaction to the meeting of 
higher wants. The maintenance of a decent standard depends on 
the father's earning, in ordinary cases, enough to meet the wants 
of the family until the children are really fit to go to work. When 
the father's earnings have to be supplemented by the earnings of 
others, or by taking lodgers, the standard of life is lowered and 
the integrity of the family is imperiled. 



THE FAMILY IN A TYPICAL MILL TOWN 



MARGARET F. BYINGTON 
Member of the Staff of the Pittsburg Survey 



The effect of our industrial system on family life is in most 
cities rendered indefinite by the pressure of complicating factors. 
In a small community, however, which is dependent on a single 
industry, the factors of the problem are simplified, and therefore 
the relation is clearer and the conclusions more obvious. 

For this reason I venture to offer a very simple and concrete 
description of the type of family and the conditions of family 
life in a steel-mill town, believing that it may serve at least as 
an illustration for this afternoon's discussion. The facts offered 
are the result of a six months' investigation as to the cost of 
living in Homestead, and are, I believe, true in the main of the 
steel towns of the Pittsburg district. 

When, in 1881, Klomans started to build a small steel mill, he 
located it in a little village seven miles from Pittsburg, appropri- 
ately enough called Homestead. The industrial development of 
the city had seemed too remote to affect it. But the mill became 
a part of the United States Steel Corporation and is now the 
largest steel plant in the world, while the village, which has grown 
with it, now has a population of about 25,000. Not only did 
the initial impulse of the town's growth come from the mill, but 
throughout the industry has, for two reasons, definitely deter- 
mined Homestead's development— one, that, as there is no other 
considerable industry in the town, the men are dependent for 
occupation on the mill; the other, that, since the strike of 1892, 
when the power of the Amalgamated Association came to an end, 
the corporation has, by its decisions as to wage and hours of 
labor, determined practically without hindrance the conditions 
under which the men live. Because of these two factors we may 
consider that the social and economic institutions of Homestead 
are t)rpical of those which a powerful organized industry is likely 

73 



74 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

to develop, a statement limited by the fact that conditions would 
be very different in a community where the prevailing industry 
was of another type. 

The conditions to be discussed are simplified by a marked 
homogeneity of type in the families of Homestead, in itself a 
result of the industrial situation. Marked distinctions of wealth 
are totally absent. Two groups do indeed exist with different 
standards and no common interests; the Slavs and the English- 
speaking workers; but this distinction is of race rather than of 
wealth. The Slavs are usually day laborers, while the majority 
of the English-speaking men are skilled or semi-skilled, but in 
spite of these differences both groups are wiage-eamers. Even 
the number of professional men is not as large as in a town far- 
ther from a city, while the owners of the mill — the stockholders — 
scattered throughout the country, knowing their property only as 
a source of dividends, have no part or interest in the town's 
development. As a result, this town of working-men has not the 
lack of mutual understanding resulting from great differences in 
wealth and standards, but neither has it the stimulus which comes 
from the presence and leadership of men of education with leisure. 
What the town offers is what the working-people have created 
for themselves under the conditions imposed by the industry. 

From the standpoint of family development probably the most 
significant fact about the town is that it offers work for men only. 
Aside from the steel mill and one machine shop, the only work in 
the town is in providing for the needs of the workers, with but 
chance work for womai. As Pittsburg is a 45 minutes* car 
ride distant the work it offers is not easily available. The wage 
in the mill, moreover, though by no means abundant, is fair and 
steady. The laborer earns at a minimum rate of 16J/2 cents an 
hour, $1.65 a day, while the semi-skilled or skilled workers earn 
from $2.00 to $4.00, and occasionally as high as $5.00 or $6.00 
a day. 

The work is in addition regular. From the panic of 1893 
to that of 1907, I am told that the mill was not shut down for a 
single day. The day men, therefore, who are paid their full wage 
unless the mill actually closes, have a steady income the year 



THE FAMILY IN A TYPICAL MILL TOWN 75 

round, except in periods of industrial depression. The tonnage 
men, who are paid according to output, do feel even a temporary 
cutting-down of orders, but as they are the ones who ordinarily 
receive the highest pay, the occasional lessening of their wage is 
not so disastrous. 

As a result of these factors the town in general seems to have 
adopted the position that the women should stay at home, and, 
by good housekeeping, make the money go a long way, rather 
than go out to work and earn a little more. This is shown con- 
cretely in the incomes of tho^ families whose budgets were 
secured for the investigation. Among the English-speaking 
people the husbands and sons contributed 92.8 per cent, among 
the native whites — practically the entire income, and 94.6 per 
cent among the English-speaking Europeans. There was no 
income from the work of women unless one would so consider 
what was received from lodgers. This constituted 4.6 per cent, 
of the total income in the European group, and 2.7 per cent, 
among the native white. 

We find, then, that as a result of the kind of work offered the 
town consists of a group of working-men's families; the man 
is the breadwinner. The effect of the industrial situation is 
further shown in the work of the children. The girls show little 
more tendency than their mothers to become wage-earners. In 
the thirty-eight English-speaking families there were fifteen girls 
over fourteen, not one of whom was at work. Four were in the 
high school, the remainder at home helping with the housework. 
While this is probably an extreme figure, as some girls in Home- 
stead do go to work in stores or offices, it reveals a general feel- 
ing in the town that "the home is woman's sphere." While one 
may question whether from the standpoint of the present the 
additional income from the girl's wages would not add more to 
the comfort of the family than her help in the household, from 
my acquaintance with housekeepers of all sorts I am convinced 
that good home training is invaluable in preparing girls for their 
own homes later. The four champion housekeepers of my 
acquaintance were the daughters of Pennsylvania farmers. One 
of them, when I expressed my surprise at how much more she 



76 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

had accomplished than others with the same income, gave as the 
reason for her success, that girls who had been in stores or fac- 
tories had no training in management and were quite helpless 
when they faced a housekeeper's problems. 

The situation as far as the sons are concerned is somewhat 
different. Fifteen of the seventeen boys over fourteen were at 
work contributing among the whites 9.6 per cent., and among the 
English-speaking Europeans 18 per cent of the total income. 
Though the other two boys were still in the high school, we find 
on the whole a marked absence of interest in academic or even in 
technical training ,for these sons. As the daughters, instead of 
learning trades, are at home becoming practical housekeepers 
under their mothers' direction, so the sons, following in their 
fathers' footsteps, are entering directly into the practical work 
of the mill to get there the training for future success. That 
the best-paid men in the mill, such as rollers and heaters, have 
secured their jobs through experience in the mill rather than 
through outside training has doubtless much to do with this atti- 
tude. Through the influence of the fathers, the boys sometimes 
get what are known as pencil jobs, or other places where the 
work is light and apparently more gentlemanly, but where the 
pay is seldom so high. Usually, however, they b^in in the 
regular boy's work, as messenger-boys in the yards, or door- 
openers. Though these give no special training for the future, 
as the line of promotion is usually open a boy has a good chance 
of becoming at least a semi-skilled workman on fair pay. Pro- 
motion is sometimes tmduly rapid, however, so that boys of 
16 or 18 are earning men's wages, with little chance of fur- 
ther promotion. One woman who r^retted that her son had 
not learned a trade, said that he was unwilling to go through 
a long apprenticeship when in the mill he could earn good pay at 
once. In spite of the fact that because of long hours and the 
danger from accident, women often wish their sons to take some 
other work, they usually do go into the mill. This means that 
as for some years they stay at home and contribute their share 
to the family income, they create a period of economic prosperity^ 



THE FAMILY IN A TYPICAL MILL TOWN 77 

The family is at this time often able to make extra provision for 
the future, as, for instance, l>u)ring a house. 

We find then that the industry has by its very nature helped 
to create a type of family life. But in those factors where it has 
a choice open to it such as wages and hours, has it by its decisions, 
made possible for these families a genuine home life, a carrying 
out of their ideals for themselves? For two facts must be con- 
sidered in any study of standards of living, one the limitations or 
opportunities from without, which the family cannot aflfect, the 
other those family ideals, sometimes limited in themselves, some- 
times hampered by outside forces, which are continually strug- 
gling toward realization. How far are Homestead's ideals 
realizable on the pay the mill offers? 

It is impossible in the limits of this discussion to consider at 
all in detail the results of the budget investigation in Homestead. 
Figures are too complicated without elaborate explanations. A 
few facts however may be used in this general discussion. 

To my mind, the f undamaital fact brought out by the investi- 
gation was, that, the question of expenditure is always one of 
choices, of doing without some things in order to get others. 
This may seem axiomatic, but when applied to a wage of less than 
$12 a week it expresses pretty much the whole problem of life. 
Do we find that in order to carry out ideals of home life, such as 
having an attractive house, making due provision for the future, 
or bu)dng a house, certain absolute essentials must be gone with- 
out? Any study of the budgets of families receiving less than 
$12 a week, or even those earning from $12 to $15 demonstrates 
very clearly that this is the case. As the unskilled men, who earn 
$10 and $12 a week, compose 58 per cent, of the employees, it is 
worth while to consider briefly the problem which this large 
percentage of Homestead's population is facing. 

To indicate its extent 1 will give the average expenses of 40 
families with an income of less than $12 a week. Of a total 
expenditure of $530 a year, $241 goes for food; $103 for rent; 
$50 for clothing; $18 for furniture; $25 for fuel ; $1 1 for medical 
care, and $13 for tobacco and liquor. In addition an average of 
$38 was spent annually for insurance, leaving but $31 a year for 



78 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

amusements of all sorts, church expenses, savings, and the neces- 
sary sundries. Now obviously no one of these items is adequate, 
to say nothing of being superabundant. Rent, for example, at 
$2 a week provides only a two-room tenement, and that without 
water or toilet in the house. Food at $4.64 a week would mean 
for a family of five, only 20 cents a day, two cents a day less 
than Prof. Chittenden estimates as absolutely essential in New 
York. Fifty dollars for clothing is just one-half the sum Mr. 
Chapin gives as necessary. The tobacco and liquor item which is 
especially large among the Slavs, could, of course, be cut with 
profit, but in no other way can that pitiably small sum of $31 be 
increased. Yet from that sum savings must come if there are to 
beany. 

The different nationalities meet this problem in varying ways 
according to their ideals. Among the native white families a 
comfortable home is an essential proof of respectability. Con- 
sequently we find that they spend for rent 21.2 per cent, as 
against 16.4 per cent, among the Slavs. On the other hand, the 
Slav spends 54.3 per cent, for food, while the native whites spend 
but 44.7 per cent. That is, the Slavic family will have enough 
food anyway, while the American demands a big enough house. 
Inadequate food or bad housing alike endanger physical efficiency, 
while with overcrowding any semblance of home life becomes 
impossible. In neither group is there any margin for amuse- 
ments. 

It is not a question of good management. The cleverest 
housekeeper I know was doing marvelously on $14 a week, and 
the following statement of her average expenditure for 8 weeks, 
shows how she did it: Food $7.05; clothing .57; household ex- 
penses .59 ; rent $2.50; insurance and lodge dues .65 ; church and 
charity .09; recreation and spending money .03; doctor $1.46; 
sundries .35. Though, as you may see, she was keeping the 
unessential elements of expenditure at their lowest point, her 
food-supply was still quite inadequate. I found by a rough esti- 
mate that it was deficient about 20 per cent, in both proteida and 
calories. The budget revealed a wise choice of foods aside from 
a possibly extravagant expenditure for fresh fruit and vegetables. 



THE FAMILY IN A TYPICAL MILL TOWN 79 

If a skilful woman of Pennsylvania Dutch stock cannot manage 
on this wage, what can be expected of the average housekeeper? 

The necessity of facing these problems three times a day has 
its effect also on the overtaxed mother. One woman, who on an 
income of from $2 to $3 a day was providing for five children, 
had bought a small farm and was carrying heavy insurance. In 
order to accomplish this, she told me, she must not spend even five 
cents for a visit to the nickleodeon. When she described to me 
her hunts for bargains and her long hours of sewing to make her 
gfirls presentable, I did not wonder that she had the reputation 
of being a cranky person. 

These two women were Americans, but by far the largest 
majority of the laborers are Slavs, and it is among them that we 
find the worst results of the low wage. 

The mill has sent out a call for young vigorous men who will 
do its heavy work for a small wage. In answer to this has come 
a great number of Slavic immigrants. As is often true of a 
new group most of these men are either single or with families 
in the old country. Of the 3,602 Slavs jn the mill, 1,099 or 
30.5 per cent, were single men. This has had a disastrous effect 
on the family life of the Slavs, for these men usually board in 
families of their own nationality who live in the wretched courts 
in the Second Ward of Homestead. A study made of 21 of these 
courts revealed appalling conditions. Among the 239 families 
living there, the 102 who took lodgers had on an average four 
persons to a room. Fifty-one of these families — more than one- 
fifth — lived in one room. The two-room tenements were not in- 
frequently occupied by a man, his wife, two children, and two or 
three boarders. Under these conditions any genuine family life 
becomes impossible. 

The death-rate among the children is high, twice as high as 
in the other wards of Homestead. Moreover, training children 
under these conditions is difficult and a terrible knowledge of evil 
results from the close mingling of the children with this group 
of careless, drinking men. 

Aside from the presence of these single men and a growth of 
population with which the number of houses has not kept pace, 



8o THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

the overcrowding is due to the dominant ambition of the Slav to 
own a bit of property here or in the old country, or to have a 
bank account As we have seen, strenuous economies are neces- 
sary if their desires are to be attained. That it is ambition rather 
than a permanently low standard which is responsible for the bad 
conditions is shown by the comfort and even good taste displayed! 
by some who have succeeded in buying their own homes. 

These people do need, however, to have impressed upon their 
minds the value of education. As there is no effective school 
enumeration, and the responsibility is divided between the public 
and parochial schools, it is easy enough, where the parents are 
indifferent, for the children to drift away from regular attend- 
ance. As the steel mill with its heavy work and enormous ma- 
chinery cannot utilize the work of children there is almost no* 
labor problem in Homestead, but usually as soon as the children 
are fourteen they start in to work. 

Between ignorance and ambition these newcomers are failing" 
to secure for themselves or their children a real home life, that 
would result either in the physical or moral efficiency of the 
next generation. 

The mill which demands strong, cheap labor concerns itself 
but little whether that labor is provided with living conditions 
that will maintain its efficiency or secure the efficiency of the 
next generation. The housing situation is in the hands of men 
actuated only by a desire for the largest possible profit. More 
intelligent members of the community, on the other hand, though 
realizing the situation, do not take their responsibility for the 
aliens in their midst with sufficient seriousness to limit the power 
of these landlords. The Slavs, moreover, people used to the 
limitations of country life, are ignorant of the evil physical and 
moral effect of transferring the small rooms, the overcrowding, 
the insufficient sanitary provisions which may be endurable in 
country life with all outdoors about them, to these crowded courts^ 
under the shadow of the mill. 

Summing up the results of indifference on one side and igno- 
ranee on the other, we find a high infant death-rate, a knowledge 
of evil among little children, intolerable sanitary conditions, a low 



THE FAMILY IN A TYPICAL MILL TOWN 8i 

Standard of living, a failure of the. community to assimilate this 
new race in its midst 

As we waited in one of the little railroad stations in Home- 
stead, a Slavak came in and sat down next to a woman and her 
two-year-old child. He b^^n making shy advances to the baby, 
and coaxing her in a voice of heart-breaking loneliness. But 
she would not come to him, and finally the two left the room. As 
they went he turned to the rest of the company, and in a tone 
of sadness, taking us all into his confidence said simply, "Me 
wife, me babe Hungar." But were they here it would mean 
death for one baby in three, it would mean hard work in a dirty, 
unsanitary house for the wife, it would mean sickness and much 
evil. With them away, it means for him isolation and loneliness 
and the abnormal life of the crowded lodging-house. 

While this low wage, either among Slavs or Americans, is 
insufficient to maintain a standard of physical efficiency, the 
industry adds further that element of uncertainty for the future 
so destructive to ambitions and plans. Accidents are frequent 
Even though they are not often fatal, one that lays a man up even 
for two weeks has a disastrous effect on a slender surplus. One 
family had saved $300 to buy a house, but when the man was 
injured by a weight falling on his feet, and was laid up for six 
weeks, $80 went from the surplus. Soon after, when last winter's 
hard times came, practically all the savings had to go for food. 
Now the family wonders whether, with all these possibilities of 
disaster, it will ever dare to put all its savings into a house. 

In addition, cuts in wages are made periodically. As these 
most frequently affect the better-paid men, even they cannot start 
out on any plan involving any number of years without realizing 
that before the end of the time conditions may have changed so 
as to make its carrying out impossible. 

By the 12-hour shift as well as by the low wage the mill is 
affecting the lives of these families. Though the long hours and 
hard work may seem to be hardships that only the man would 
feel, they do react on family life. Not only do his weariness and 
his irr^^lar hours make him less inclined to enter into the family 
pleasures, but he also fails to change, through political or other 



82 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

action, the conditions under which th^ live. Because of this 
weariness-induced apathy, a man usually stays at home and 
smokes his pipe instead of troubling himself with outside affairs. 
This tendency is doubtless intensified by conditions within the 
industry. As since the strike of 1892 there have been no labor 
organizations in the town, the men do not meet to discuss the 
conditions under which thsy work, and accept passively whatever 
is offered. This same indifference seems to affect their attitude 
toward politics, so that instead of taking an active part thqr 
allow the wholesale liquor interests to dominate. Yet, through 
schools and through sanitation, the political situation does bear a 
close relation to family problems. In Homestead, for instance, 
the drinking water comes, only partly filtered, from a river which 
has already received the sewage of a number of towns and 
cities. The man continues to go three times a day for water from 
a neighbor's well and pay him 50 cents a month for the privil^;e 
instead of insisting that the borough provide a decent supply. 
There are no ordinances requiring landlords to place water or 
toilets in the houses, though the family are longing for the day 
when they can move to a house with these conveniences. An 
industrial situation which creates an attitude so passive that men 
accept, without protest, perfectly remediable evils that immedi- 
ately affect the family, is a serious one. 

These long hours have a further harm in their tendency to 
lessen the demand for amusement Aside from roller-skating 
rinks and the five-cent variety shows known as nickleodeons, 
there is, outside of the home, no real chance for amusement save 
the ever present light and refreshment offered by the fifty or 
more saloons which Homestead licenses. The mothers, who 
realize that the rinks are a source of danger to the girls, and the 
saloons an ever-present menace to family happiness, make a 
heroic and often pathetic effort to keep the home attractive enough 
to offset these temptations. While the results are perhaps not 
undesirable when the mother succeeds, every woman is not a 
genius, and when she fails there is little wholesome amusement 
to compensate for her failure. The people do not want this pro- 
vided for them by philanthropy. When speaking of the Cam^ie 



THE FAMILY IN A TYPICAL MILL TOWN 83 

library, men often said to me "We didn't want him to build a 
library for us, we would rather have had higher wages and spent 
the money for ourselves." Aside from the money, and the 
margin for amusements, as we have seen, is painfully small, they 
need the leisure to plan and enjoy. The town offers to its in- 
habitants the chance to work but it gfives them little chance to 
play. And yet play is essential if even physical efficiency is to be 
maintained. 

To sum up the situation then, we find that the mill by the 
nature of the work offered helps to develop a normal family type, 
but because of low wages, long hours, and opposition to industrial 
organization, it has done much to hamper the family in carrying 
out its ideals. 

May I in conclusion state briefly what facts as to the relation 
of family to industrial life were clarified in my own mind by this 
investigation? In the first place, in a town dominated by one 
industry the type of family is largely determined by the nature 
of that industry. Theoretical discussions as to the normal family 
have little effect, even the ideals of individual families must often 
be modified to meet this situation. In a cotton-mill town, for 
example, we are almost sure to find the women at work, while 
in a steel town it is the man's place to earn and the woman's to 
spend. This relation, obscured in commercial or large manu- 
facturing centers, stands out clearly in Homestead with its one 
mdustry. 

In the second place, the industry limits the development of 
the family life by the effect of long hours and overwork, and the 
absence of the stimulus which trades unions might supply. 
These react on the family, not only in the man's personal atti- 
tude toward them, but through his failure by political or other 
united action, to improve the conditions under which they live. 

The most obvious and fundamental relation of industry and 
family is the economic one. Without the background of a suffi- 
cient wage, even such distinct domestic virtues as thrift become 
not only impossible but harmful. If to buy a house means to 
underfeed the children; if to have a bank account means to take 
lodgers till there is no possibility of home life, we are certainly 



84 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

foolish to laud the man who realizes these ambitions, and class 
as extravagant and thriftless those who do not Our preaching 
must have a closer relation to the economic situation of the 
families. 

In years gone by the family was the industrial unit, the work 
was done in the house, was close to the problem of the home, and 
the two developed together. The family ties were strong and the 
industrial conditions strengthened them. Now the situation is 
changed, and the industry is dominant. More and more the very 
nature of the family, its ideals, and its every-day existence are 
alike molded by the opportunities for work. If we are to keep 
any abstract ideals of what family life should be, and are to 
translate these into actualities, our primary query must be whether 
our industrial system makes them possible. Without the develop- 
ment of the personal virtues economic prosperity might be futile, 
but the converse is also true. In Homestead at least, I believe, 
there are more ideals than the industrial situaticMi allows to 
become realities. 



RESULTS OF THE PITTSBURGH SURVEY 



EDWARD T. DEVINE 
New Yoric City, N. Y. 



The Pittsburgh Survey represents one way of studjring family 
life in an industrial and urban community. The method of 
personal observation by an individual investigator is obviously 
inadequate to such an undertaking. Life is too short, prejudices 
too ineradicable, individual qualifications too specialized, the 
personal equation too disturbing, to permit any single individual 
however gifted to see for himself the community as a whole, and 
to measure the influences and forces that shape the family destiny. 
The writer who boasts that he has known many cities, if by that 
he means that he has known them intimately by the method of 
first-hand observation, invites distrust. The Chicago stockyards 
district alone, or the lower East Side of New York, or the Pitts- 
burgh steel district, affords a problem too complex and difficult 
for any single-handed observer and reporter of social conditions. 
Individual inquiry and personal interpretation have brought us 
a certain distance but they cannot take us much farther. Their 
limitations have suggested the plan which we have tried in the 
experiment the results of which you have asked us to lay before 
you. That plan is in a word to organize a staff to survey the 
community as a whole, a group working under common direction, 
and rapidly enough so that the results refer to a particular period 
and to relatively definite conditions which can be clearly described. 

Whether in this first experiment we have succeeded is of 
course still to be determined, but this was the underlying idea of 
the Pittsburgh Survey. In attempting thus to reckon at once 
with the many factors of the life of a great industrial community, 
we may not have been able to go so deeply into most of them as, 
for example, special inquiries have gone into tuberculosis, child 
labor, housing, or the standard of living; although on the other 
hand we may have gone into others, such as the cost of typhoid, 
the effect of industrial accidents, the status of the steel workers, 

85 



86 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

the boarding-boss system, and the place of women in modem 
industries, more deeply than has heretofore been attempted. In 
any case our main purpose has been to offer a structural exhibit 
of the community as a whole and not to make an exhaustive in- 
vestigation of any one of its aspects. We have not dealt with 
the political mechanism, and we have not to any great extent dealt 
with vice, intemperance, or the institutions by which the com- 
munity undertakes to control them. We have dealt in the main 
with the wage-earning population, first in its industrial relations, 
and second in its social relations to the community as a whole. 

There are certain immediate, tangible results in Pittsburgh. 
An Associated Charities, an increased force of sanitary inspect- 
ors, a comprehensive housing census, a typhoid commission, and 
a permanent civic improvement commission are certainly very 
tangible and striking results, especially as they are in the nature 
of by-products to an investigation concerning which very little 
has as yet been published. 

These developments, however, interesting and gratifying as 
they are from the point of view of social progress in the com- 
mtmity, are probably not the results of the survey which are in 
your minds, as you forecast this discussion. I take it that what 
is of interest to the Economic Association and the Sociological 
Society, is rather the answer to the question : Have you really 
found out anything about Pittsburgh that we did not know per- 
fectly well before? What are the results of your survey for 
students of society and of industry? The discoveries, then, which 
I have to report, are as follows, taking the adverse results first : 

I. An altogether incredible amount of overwork by every- 
body, reaching its extreme in the twelve-hour shift for seven 
days in the week in the steel mills and the railway switchyards. 

II. Low wages for the great majority of the laborers em- 
ployed by the mills, not lower than in other large cities, but low 
compared with the prices — ^so low as to be inadequate to the main- 
tenance of a normal American standard of living : wages adjusted 
to the single man, not to the responsible head of a family. 

III. Still lower wages for women, who receive for example 
in one of the metal trades, in which the proportion of women is 



RESULTS OF THE PITTSBURGH SURVEY 87 

great 'enough to be menacing, one-half as much as unorganized 
men in the same shops and one-third as much as the men in the 
union* 

IV. An absentee capitalism, with bad effects strikingly analo- 
gous to those of absentee landlordism, of which also Pittsburgh 
furnishes noteworthy examples. 

V. A continuous inflow of immigrants with low standards, 
attracted by a wage which is high by the standards of south- 
eastern Europe, and which yields a net pecuniary advantage 
because of abnormally low expenditures for food and shelter, 
and inadequate provision for sickness, accident, and death. 

VI. The destruction of family life, not in any imaginary 
or mystical sense, but by the demands of the day's work, and by 
the very demonstrable and material method of typhoid fever and 
industrial accidents, both preventable, but costing last year in 
Pittsburgh considerably more than a thousand lives, and irre- 
trievably shattering many homes. 

VII. Archaic sofcial institutions such as the aldermanic court, 
the ward school district, the family garbage disposal, and the 
unr^enerate charitable institution, still surviving after the con- 
ditions to which they were adapted have disappeared. 

VIII. The contrast — ^which does not become blurred by 
familiarity with detail, but on the contrary becomes more vivid 
as the outlines are filled in — ^the contrast between the prosperity 
on the one hand of the most prosperous of all the communities 
of our western civilization, with its vast natural resources, the 
generous fostering of government, the human energy, the tech- 
nical development, the gigantic tonnage of the mines and mills, 
the enormous capital of which the bank balances afford an indica- 
tion, and, on the other hand, the neglect of life, of health, of 
physical vigor, even of the industrial efficiency of the individual. 
Certainly no community before in America or Europe has ever 
had such a surplus, and never before has a great community 
applied what it had so meagerly to the rational purposes of human 
life. Not by gifts of libraries, galleries, technical schools, and 
parks, but by the cessation of toil one day in seven and sixteen 
hours in the twenty- four, by the increase of wages, by the sparing 



88 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

of lives, by the prevention of accidents, and by raising the stand- 
ards of domestic life, should the surplus come back to the people 
of the community in which it is created. 

As we turn the t)rpewritten pages of these reports and as we 
get behind them to the cards of original memoranda on which 
they are based, and as we get behind them again to the deepest 
and most clearly defined impressions made in the year and a half 
on the minds of the members of the investigating staff, it is the 
first and the last of these results that we see more clearly than any 
others — ^the twelve-hour day, and social n^lect. Sunday woric 
and night work are but another expression, as it were, of the 
same principle of long hours of overwork, of which the t)rpical 
and persistent expression is the twelve-hour shift. Nothing else 
explains so much in the industrial and social situation in the 
Pittsburgh district as the twelve-hour day — ^which is in fact for 
half the year, the twelve-hour night Everything else is keyed 
up to it. Foremen and superintendents, and ultimately directors 
and financiers, are subject to its law. There are no doubt bank- 
ers and teachers and bricklayers in Pittsburgh who work less, 
but the general law of the region is desperate, unremitting toil — 
extending in some large industries to twelve hours, for six days 
one week, and eight days the next There is no seventh day save 
as it is stolen from sleep. There are of course occupations, as in 
the blast furnaces, in which there are long waits between the 
spurts of brief, intense expenditure of energy, but the total effect 
of the day is as I have described. 

For the effect, as well as for the causes of the twelve-hour 
day, and for a more exact statement of its extent, its limitations, 
and the exceptions, I must refer to the reports. We have at- 
tempted to trace the influence of the great contest of 1892, and 
of the incoming waves of immigration, to indicate the effect of 
the long day on the length of the working life, on industrial 
efficiency, on home life, on citizenship. When it has all been 
done, however, the unadorned fact that in our most highly de- 
veloped industrial community, where the two greatest individual 
fortunes in history have been made, and where the foundations 
of the two most powerful business corporations have been laid, 



RESULTS OF THE PITTSBURGH SURVEY 89 

the mass of the workers in the master industry are driven as large 
numbers of laborers, whether slave or free, have scarcely before 
in human history been driven, is surely an extraordinary fact. I 
do not mean to suggest that the conditions of employment are less 
desirable than under a system of slavery. What I mean is merely 
that the inducement to a constantly increased output and a con- 
stant acceleration of pace is greater than has heretofore been 
devised. By a nice adjustment of piece wages and time wages, 
so that where the "boss" or "pusher," as he is known in the mills, 
controls, time wages prevail, and where the individual worker 
controls, piece wages prevail ; by the resistless operation of organ- 
ized control at one point, and the effort to recover earnings re- 
duced by skilful cuts of piece wages at another; by the danger of 
accident, and the lure of the pay which seems high by old-country 
standards, the pace is kept, is accelerated, and again maintained. 
There is one result and there is no other like it. 

All of these results of the survey, relating to overwork, low 
wages, immigration, destruction of families, archaic institutions, 
and indifference to adverse living conditions, appear to me worthy 
of your very careful consideration. They are presented without 
exaggeration or prejudice in the papers that have been written 
and in the fuller reports that are to follow. It is possible that 
yellow journalism would find here some justification. When Mr. 
Brisbane the other day gloried in the yellowness of his newspaper, 
chuckled over the unsuccessful attempts at imitation by other 
journals, compared his color effects with the Almighty's painting 
of a lurid sunset, and reached his climax by expressing regret 
that they had not yet been able to make a noise resembling 
thunder, I confess that having in mind the unpublished records 
of our Pittsburgh Survey, I had a momentary pang of regret 
that we were not in position to set them free by some such meth- 
ods as those which Mr. Brisbane so unblushingly defends. The 
reading of a paper in a scientific society and the publication of 
a few special numbers of Charities seem inadequate. However, 
we must accept the limitations along with the great advantages of 
the media in which it has pleased Providence to permit us to 
work. I proceed to present other facts which I would not wish to 



90 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

classify as either adverse or favorable, and to give a brief and 
inadequate enumeration of the distinctly favorable indications. 

Outside the mills, the wages of ordinary day laborers in the 
Pittsburgh district are from $1.50 to $1.75 for a ten-hour day. 
The municipality pays more: $1.75 to $2 for eight hours. In 
skilled trades, in seasonal trades, and in thoroughly unionized 
trades, compensation is higher. The level toward which wages 
tend is $9 to $10 for a sixty-hour week. Common laborers in 
the mines, because of their union, earn from 50 to 90 per cent, 
more by the hour than laborers of a similar grade outside. 
Motormen and conductors, under their union agreement, earn 
25 per cent, more per hour than teamsters, although their occupa- 
tion requires no more time in which to become proficient. In 
the building trades, which are seasonal and organized, the wages 
are $3.40 to $5.20 for eight hours ; and in the metal trades, which 
are continuous and partly organized, wages are $2.75 to $4 a 
day of nine or ten hours. The destruction of unionism in the 
steel mills has had effects which are too far-reaching and impor- 
tant for brief summary here, but they are described by Mr. Fitch 
in the reports with thoroughness and a wealth of illustrative 
detail. In general I may say that the low wages of unskilled 
immigrant labor are higher than they were fifteen years ago, but 
that the wages of skilled labor formerly organized are lower. 

Though it may seem extravagant, I am inclined to claim for 
the survey the discovery of the Slav as a human being, though I 
do not overlook the scientific studies of Dr. Steiner or the illtun- 
inating articles which we have previously published in Charities 
from Miss Balch on the Slavs in Europe and in America. I 
refer here, however, more especially to Mr. Koukol's study of his 
compatriots, his analysis of their character, their attitude toward 
America, and the effect on them of such conditions as those under 
which they live and work in Pittsburgh and the neighboring mill 
towns. Over one-half of the workers in the steel mills are Slavs, 
and in the total immigration Slavs are one of the three largest 
racial elements which we are now absorbing into our population. 
An anomalous feature of this whole situation is that our greatest 
industrial community should thus be dependent on the supply of 



RESULTS OF THE PITTSBURGH SURVEY 91 

able-bodied laborers from agrictiltural conununities five thousand 
miles distant 

On the credit side of the accoimt there are at least the follow- 
ing considerations : 

I. The adverse conditions are, after all, conditions which 
naturally, or at least not infrequently, accompany progress. Thqr 
are incidents of the production of wealth on a vast scale. They 
are remediable whenever the community thinks it worth while 
to remedy them. If the hardships and misery which we find in 
Pittsburgh were due to poverty of resources, to the improductivity 
of toil, then the process of overcoming theiti might indeed be 
tedious and discouraging. Since they are due to haste in acquir- 
ing wealth, to inequity in distribution, to the inadequacy of the 
mechanism of municipal government, they can be overcome rap- 
idly if the community so desires. 

II. There are many indications that the commimity is awaken- 
ing to these adverse conditions and that it is even now ready to 
deal with some of them. I liave already cited instances of new 
movements in this direction, and the detailed reports cite many 
other favorable signs. The arrest of councilmen and bankers 
for bribery may for a time divert attention from the improvement 
of conditions to the prosecution of individual malefactors. But 
this interruption to fimdamental social reform may serve to 
strengthen the determination of citizens who see what work is to 
be done, and that the city administration is courageously imder- 
taking it, to defer the anticipated reversion to ordinary machine 
politics and its corrupt alliance with predatory business interests. 

III. It is fair to point out as a favorable result of the inquiry 
that there is an increasing number, including the mayor and 
other city officials, officers of corporations, business men, social 
workers, and others, who are entirely ready to enter with others 
and with one another on the dispassionate search for causes and 
remedies, recognizing that the adverse conditions are there, rec- 
ognizing that distinction lies not in ostrich-like refusal to see 
them, but in statesman-like willingness to gauge them and to 
imderstand them, and so far as it is possible to remove them. 
Pittsburgh is unique only in the extent to which tendencies ob- 



92 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

servable everywhere have here actually, because of high industrial 
development, and great industrial activity, had the opportunity to 
give tangible proofs of their real character and inevitable goal. 

IV. It will be made apparent also when the survey publishes 
its findings that in the period immediately preceding the under- 
taking there had been several noteworthy advances in Pittsburgh. 
A reform mayor had been elected. Greater Pittsburgh, with 
Allegheny as the principal accession, had been decreed, and inci- 
dentally in this process one of the most conspicuous of our 
national "fences" for thieves and other criminals had been thrown 
down. Plans had been made for a suitable civic celebration of 
the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the 
city. The administration, with the co-operation of smoke manu- 
facturers, had entered upon a death grapple with the smoke 
nuisance. A big boulevard system had been created, and a five- 
and-a-half-million-dollar filtration plant had been installed. 

The net result of the survey, so far as it throws light on the 
inquiry formulated on the programme, whether modem industry 
and city life are unfavorable to the family, is to suggest an 
aflirmative answer. Very unfavorable, very disastrous conse- 
quences are clearly discernible. Whether they are inseparable 
from industrial life in the city is for the future to determine. 
Yellow journalism, one very crude but not altogether ineffective 
method of popular education as to certain of the unfavorable 
effects of modem industry, we reject as not consistent with our 
traditions. As a corrective, we shall do well to utilize in the class- 
room and in serious discussion such material as is furnished by 
the Pittsburgh Survey and by other similar inquiries. Assuming 
accuracy in the field and suitable editorial revision, it is within 
bounds to say that we shall soon know more about Pittsburgh 
than we have known about any other of our American industrial 
communities. That in itself is something, but our chief interest 
in that result will lie in the stimulus which happily it may give to 
the desire and the determination to leam as much or more by 
similar or by better methods about other communities. 



ARE MODERN INDUSTRY AND CITY LIFE UNFAVOR- 
ABLE TO THE FAMILY? 



PROFESSOR CHARLES RICHMOND HENDERSON 
The University of Chicago 



The essence of the question under discussion, — ^It is not: 
Is life in an industrial city more unfavorable to the family than 
it formerly was, i. e., are we advancing? Nor, Is life in an 
industrial city more unfavorable to sound family life than country 
residence? but rather, What are the facts about urban conditions 
which have a harmful tendency, and are these conditions neces- 
sarily inherent in urban organization of industry or are they 
capable of improvement by known means? If not by known 
means then at what points should we direct and concentrate our 
investigations ? It is not necessary here to reiterate the proof that 
the cities are growing rapidly in all parts of the civilized world, 
nor to explain the movement cityward. This is already familiar 
to all. If any tendency is part of destiny and fate this seems to 
be such. Even when people are perfectly aware of the effect of 
urban ways on longevity, they seem to prefer the brief and merry, 
or at least exciting, career in cities to the cycle of far and drowsy 
Cathay. 

"Modem industry" is almost equivalent to "city life," because 
the great industry, the factory system, builds cities around the 
chimneys of steam engines and electric plants. Cheap production 
of commodities by machinery requires some degree of proximity 
of operations. Our systems of transportation and trade work 
in the same direction. We may then, ignoring exceptional con- 
ditions, discuss directly the effects of urban residence on family 
life, and treat the mill, shop, and factory as special aspects of 
city life. 

The dwelling, the street, the places of work and recreation 
are the oiftward and physical factors which directly affect the 
fortunes of urban workmen and their families. 

The habits and conduct of the people under these outward 

93 



94 '^HE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

conditions are also causal factors, and all the influences react 
upon each other and reverberate in countless ways. 

I. What are the facts in relation to the physical well-being 
of the family in cities? The social function of the normal family 
is to maintain the life of the community at its best by producing, 
rearing, and educating soimd and vigorous offspring. 

The statisticians have assembled for us the evidences of 
relatively high morbidity and mortality in cities, and it is not 
necessary to reproduce the tables ; the general results are sufficient 
for our present purpose.^ 

Density of population is characteristic of cities and tends 
to increase morbidity and mortality. The death rate in cities is 
generally, though not always, higher than in the surrounding 
country. This is true of every state in the Union. The death 
rate is usually greater in the ratio of the size of the city, although 
the improvements in modem sanitary methods are telling with 
better effect on cities than on rural communities owing to the 
more prompt and the better administered application of science 
under municipal government 

The death rate of infants has hitherto been especially marked 
in cities owing to the defective supply of milk, and probably to 
the neglect of infants by mothers who work for a living away 
from home. The exhaustion of girls in factories and mills 
tends to increase the mortality of these infants after marriagie. 

The danger from infectious diseases is increased in crowded 
tenements. Tuberculosis and pneumonia are made more common 
and fatal by the fact that common halls and corridors carry the 
germs of these dreaded diseases into every apartment, so that a 
single patient quickly exposes numerous neighbors. When light 
and ventilation are defective these evils rage with all the more 
intense virulence. 

The diseases caused by occupations affect the vigor of the 
family in various ways ; directly by impairing the general health 

^Mayo-Smith, Statistics and Sociology, pp. laS ff. (deaths), pp. X54 ff> 
(sickness) ; Weber, Growth of Cities, chaps, vi, vii ; Westergaard, MorbiditSi 
^nd Mortalitdt; Bailey, Modern Social Conditions, p. 243; Newshohne, Vitai 
Statistics; these give the primary sources. 



INDUSTRY AND CITY UFE, AND THE FAMILY 9$ 

and poisoning the germ plasm, and indirectly by reducing the 
food supply and the comforts of clothing and dwelling. 

In the absence of adequate and compulsory sickness and in- 
valid insurance the cessation of income of the stricken husband 
and father means gradual starvation and the diseases which 
always prey on bodies imperfectly nourished. The people of the 
United States have not yet become awake to the misery which 
assails the domestic life from this cause; and we are behind all 
other civilized nations in providing insurance. We have, after 
stubborn resistance of the laissez-faire tribe, secured compulsory 
poor law and compulsory education. The next logical step is 
compulsory insurance in its whole range, on grounds of public 
health. 

Not only injuries and diseases caused by occupation, but also 
the employment of women and children under unfavorable condi- 
tions is a factor in the destruction of sound family life; and, as 
a rule, these evils are more serious in urban than in rural indus- 
tries. Exposure to the elements and the rapid increase of compli- 
cated machinery, sometimes driven by steam power, are facts of 
importance in agricultural occupations, and require more attention 
and investigation than they have hitherto received. 

The dwelling has been the center of anxious interest in cities 
for a long time. The sweated industries, carried on in the same 
rooms where the family lives, are more difficult to control than 
the factory industries, and they are a perpetual menace to health. 
After the great work of De Forest and Veiller on the tenement- 
house problem little remains to be said in this connection; al- 
though local investigation must be made to arouse the conscience 
of the people and authorities of any particular community. We 
need another volume, based on scientific study, of the perils to 
health in country residences. It is amazing how little impression 
. an investigation in Pittsburgh or New York makes in St Louis 
or Chicago; it is so easy to parry a stroke by pleading a differ- 
ence of situation. 

The places of recreation and culture in cities are often 
crowded and almost always perilous to health and hence to the 



96 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

family. Theaters, dance halls, saloons, and even churches are 
not rarely means of infection. 

How far are these evils due necessarily to industry and to 
urban life? and how far are they preventable, avoidable by 
known measures ? Preventive medicine and public hygiene have 
already done more for cities than for the country and we seem 
to be at the beginning of a powerful and concerted movement to 
combat all these evils.* 

II. Are the conditions of city life favorable or imfavorable 
to fecundity? The answer must be guarded and must take 
account of the elements of population, occupations, presence of 
immigrants, age groups, demands of fashionable society, etc. 

"In Germany the birth-rate for the entire country is from 
4 to 6 per cent, higher than for cities of 50,000 and over."* In 
Hungary this is true. In Massachusetts the birth-rate was higher 
in towns. In Sweden the birth-rate of cities has gained upon 
and passed the rural birth-rate. The birth-rates of large cities, as 
London and Paris, are slowly falling. 

The social position of the family has a decisive influence, the 
births being in inverse ratio to income. 

"The most obvious explanation of a high birth-rate would be 
a large proportion of women in the child-bearing period. The 
cities have a larger percentage of such persons, hence for this 
reason, and not because of greater fecundity of city women, do 
the cities often have a high birth-rate."* The cost of living is 
greater in cities than in the country, and the necessities of life 
must be paid for in cash. Income is more uncertain. Multitudes 
of unskilled workingmen are liable to discharge on an hour's 
notice; and this is true of clerks and salesmen. This uncertainty 
of income is an important factor in relation to the production 
of offspring. 

Furthermore, the city child is not so early a producer as the 
child on the farm, whether boy or girl. Very early a rural child 

* See Dr. Kobcr's paper on "Industrial Diseases" in Bulletin No, 75, Bureao 
of Labor, 1908. 

* Bailey, Modem Social Conditions, p. xo8. 

* Weber, p. 331, 



INDUSTRY AND CITY UFE, AND THE FAMILY 97 

can be a real aid in kitchen or field. This can be modified by 
earlier trade training from the sixth grade up, as is now pro- 
vided in some cities for half-day schools and shops. 

The attractions of pleasure and comfort make a stronger 
appeal to the urban dweller than to the farmer. The difficulty of 
securing quiet and retirement during pregnancy in a tenement 
house or expensive apartment residence is a factor of no slight 
significance, especially when public sentiment among women 
makes maternity ridiculous. 

III. Communistic urban habits tend to create and sustain 
commimistic beliefs and sentiments; and these are distinctively 
unfavorable to the principles upon which the monogamic family 
is based. Paul Gohre describes his experience in a German in- 
dustrial community, where men work all day in a common shop, 
eat their luncheon in crowds, seek their entertainments in throngs, 
travel in a mob, and, before marriage, satisfy their sexual appe- 
tites in a common brothel. The same phenomena may be 
observed in any large industrial town. If the t)rpe of family we 
have known and which is maintained in the country is desirable, 
then these forces must be regarded as disint^^ting and perilous. 

Are the evils of such communistic living avoidable? Are 
there socializing influences mixed up with the dangerous tenden- 
cies which may well be fostered ? 

IV. Certainly there are advantages in urban life which must 
favorably affect the domestic institution. There are wider and 
more rapid means of communication and of receiving impres- 
sions; although the rural telephone and trolley are making 
marvelous changes outside the cities. There are more mental 
stimuli in the thronged street than in the sleepy lanes, and along 
the quiet waters of pastures and meadows. 

It is possible that the urban socialization of industries gives 
to the city woman the advantages of slavery without its cruelty, 
and thus creates a wider margin of leisure — the first condition of 
higher culture. Certainly, as all admit, our largest leisure class 
is made up of women from whom wealth and modem mechanical 
devices have taken away numerous household cares and labors. 

V. Divorce is an effect of urban conditions and beliefs; it is 



98 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

an effect of evil and sometimes the milder evil selected out of 
many worse miseries. In the United States in about 95 per cent 
of the cases the rate is higher in the counties in which large cities 
are situated than in the counties where the population is princi- 
pally rural ;*^ and this in spite of the fact that Catholics gather 
in cities. 

Only of recent years has the prevalence of venereal diseases, 
and especially gonorrhea, been carefully studied. Even 3ret the 
public is not fully aware of the domestic misery catfsed by these 
diseases contracted by extra-marital intercourse by men and com- 
mtmicated to innocent wives and children. The records of 
divorce courts rarely mention the real ground on which good 
women apply for divorce, and the federal statistics, therefore, 
must be studied in the light of investigations on which judicial 
records throw little light 

Now, the social evil is distinctly an urban evil, and so far as 
it leads to divorce must be charged in great part to the conditions 
of urban life. The same is true of the use of narcotic poisons and 
alcohol to which so much domestic ruin can be traced. It is not 
creditable to many of the scientific men of America that they 
have underestimated the importance of this factor and some of 
them have so written that their sentences are used in advertise- 
ments of brewers and distillers to blind the eyes of the im- 
educated. 

VI. Some writers have emphasized the value of citv life as 
an agency of social selection; the strong and capable are given 
a career while the feeble in vitality and character go to ruin and 
are weeded out But this kind of social selection is too costly; 
its lightning strokes kill many of the finest human beings along 
with the neglected ; and not seldom the nursery of deadly germs, 
physical and moral, is in the homes and streets of the so-called 
unfit. Those who fall into the doom clutch at the fair and com- 
petent and drag them to ruin with themselves. 

The incompetent must either be educated to fill a useful place 
and feel strong for productive labor, or be sent under guard to 
die at peace in celibate colonies. That is the only social selection 

* Bailey, op. ciU, p. 206, 



INDUSTRY AND CITY UFE, AND THE FAMILY 99 

which is worthy of the name of rational ; all the rest is wasteful 
accident, trusting to chance which plays with loaded dice. 

None of the urban plagues which have been mentioned are 
in the realm of destiny or blind nature; all are products of himian 
choice and conduct; and by human energy, guided by science, they 
can gradually be diminished or removed ; but none will disappear 
without effort Even laziness may sometimes be cured by medi- 
cine. In Uncle Tom's Cabin Mrs. Stowe put into the mouth of 
her Yankee woman visiting the South the descriptive words, "Oh 
heow shiftless!" Now comes Professor Stiles and tdls us that 
"anaemia, malnutrition, marked indisposition for sustained exer- 
tion, and resultant social condition, usually described as 'shift- 
lessness,' which have characterized large numbers of the poorer 
class of rural whites in the South, are due to a widespread infec- 
tion with the Uncinaria americana, or hookworm."^ 

It would be a rational ground for hilarity, to make even a 
Quaker or a Puritan laugh, if some of the worst demons of eco- 
nomic vice could be expelled from the system with a good dose 
of vermifuge. Who shall set a bound to science? 

The form of the topic limits our discussion to description of 
present facts, and, rigidly interpreted, would not permit us to 
consider how far these actual evils are remediable nor by what 
means. Of course the greater and only final himian interest lies 
in the methods of amelioration provided by the sciences of sanita- 
tion, public hygiene, and education. 

But the detection and description of the adverse factors in> 
plies the possession of a standard and the consciousness of the 
wrong as wrong. This is in itself an important step on the way 
to betterment. 

A multitude of people will, for good reasons, choose rural 
homes; another multitude will select urban homes; both may be 
aided to live a rational life with wholesome surroundings ; both 
can, up to the measure of their capacity, live a complete human 
life; and already men in institutions of learning, on farms, in 
cities, and in administrative positions are seeking the ways to 
the best possible life for farmers and residents of cities. 

• Dr. H. B. Young, N. Y. Medical Journal, November a8, 1908, p. 1028. 



lOO THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

The literary and scientific man is tempted to regard the farmer 
as lacking in intellectual quality because the latter has not ex- 
pressed his ideas in melodious phrases or buried them in labora- 
tory memoirs. 

If we look closely we can discover that farmers have really 
a vast fund of valuable knowledge — ^knowledge of v^etables, 
animals, wounds, diseases, remedies, technical processes, govern- 
ment, law, markets, prices, transportation. The farmer is an 
experimenter. All he learns he expresses, not in literary form, 
in articles in books, but in improved land, in selecting according 
to biological principles the best seeds and the best stock for breed- 
ing, in adapting his methods to climate and soil, in building up 
schools and churches, and in rearing healthy children. 

We need not be too industrious in making out differences 
between rural and urban populations. The differences in homes, 
habits, and satisfactions on which comic cartoonists and some 
social philosophers lay emphasis either do not exist, except in 
imagination, or are merely superficial. The broad hat, rough 
boots, wild beard, and exposed suspenders of the caricatured 
"hayseed" have little meaning in respect to the essentials of 
human character. The city dweller judges by what he sees and 
he does not see much of the real farmer. Many of the railroad 
kings, whom our British ambassador praises as the ablest men of 
our nation, are the children of "clod-hoppers" and may retain 
a little of the ancestral trick of getting over rough ground to 
their destination. We need to be on our guard against hasty, 
unfair, and misleading generalizations, and the prejudices of 
our Brahmin caste. Many of our rich men, under expert medical 
advice, are living a rural life several months of each year for 
physical and mental health. They are wise who return periodi- 
cally to the conditions of life which have thus far helped to 
maintain the vitality of our nation at the highest point The 
aristocracy of England, and their imitators, are ambitious to own 
and occupy country seats. This will lengthen the life of this 
group — not always with eugenic consequences. 

But what of the poor in our cities, whose crowded rooms 
are pestilential in winter and purgatorial in summer? Is the best 



INDUSTRY AND CITY UFE, AND THE FAMILY lOI 

w€ can do for these to send them to the country for a week, or 
give dying babes a charity ride in a floating hospital? Are even 
the small park and playground, the miniature reminder of real 
country, the horizon of our vision? We have already adopted 
in our building ordinances a minimum standard of cubic atmos- 
phere and square feet of window space for actinic rays; but as 
yet we have not come in sight of a standard of outdoor space 
per man, woman and child. We are merely making unscientific 
guesses and leaving the i'eal control of sky and grass room to 
individualism and commercial motives, that is, to the besotted and 
the blind. In many cases suburban manufacturing villages, built 
to escape the rule of trade-unions, soon develop unsanitary condi- 
tions of smoke, dust, unwholesome housing, and bad drainage 
and water supply, without securing any of the advantages of 
moral surroundings. 

A more comprehensive system of social control is required 
in order to promote social selection economically and effectively. 
What direction must this control take? 

I. It has been proposed that we try to educate the prosperous 
and healthy to produce more children. In the first Report of 
the Committee on Eugenics of the American Breeders' Associa- 
tion it was urged : 

It IS a pressing problem to know what to do to increase the birth-rate 
of the superior stocks and keep proportionate at least the contribution of 
the inferior stocks. One of the most promising influences is the eugenic 
movement started in England by Galton and Pearson to make proper pro- 
creation a part^of religion and ethics, rather than a matter of whim only. 
.... Our appeal should .... be directed to men of average ability to 
have families which will bring at least two children to maturity and parent- 
hood and especially to men of superior ability to have larger families. 

With this conclusion and with this appeal there can be no 
reasonable ground for controversy. Unquestionably something 
can be gained by persuading people to consider procreation from 
the point of view of racial interest and patriotism. The Roman 
Catholic church has certainly succeeded in Canada and the 
United States by urging its members to outpopulate the Protes- 
tants ; whether always with eugenic results must be a matter for 



I02 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

further investigation. At any rate the universal and persistent 
teaching and counsel in the confessional secures results; general 
freedom from divorce and from childless marriages. If this 
mighty religious influence could be made scientific and eugenic — 
and why not? — it would be an immense help toward improving 
our American stock. 

But there is a limit to the willingness and the duty of persons 
of ability and health. If they should really try to run a race with 
the thriftless, the reckless, the dwarfs, the neurotic, the vicious, 
the criminal, the insane, the feeble-minded, what would be the 
outlook? Can we seriously urge this policy without further 
measures? The effort might be too costly, might even lead to the 
exhaustion and degeneration of a large number of conscientious 
and morally earnest mothers. Society has no right to ask of 
such persons unreasonable sacrifices in a hopeless competition 
with the unrestrained appetites of the unfit and undesirable. 

2. There is a way by which society can secure a better stock 
in one or two generations, and that is by the use of l^al powers 
which it already exercises without raising any ethical or consti- 
tutional questions. It is not necessary to reproduce in a brief 
report the mass of facts collected and presented with almost 
passionate earnestness by Dr. Rentoul.'' We have at hand the 
celibate colonies of insane, feeble-minded, and epileptics. The 
policy of segregation nowhere raises doubt or general opposition. 
It is clearly and distinctly the right of a commonwealth, when 
called upon to support a large number of the obviously unfit, to 
deprive them of liberty and so prevent their propagation of 
defects and thus the perpetuation of their misery in their oflF- 
spring. 

But the policy of s^jegation has one disadvantage, which 
Dr. Rentoul has made prominent : the insane are discharged when 
cured, and yet become parents of degenerates; and the feeble- 
minded and epileptic cannot always be guarded so as to prevent 
propagation. Therefore the policy of painless asexualization 
is offered. 

3. But no social policy of segregation or of asexualization can 

^ Race Culture or Race Suicide, 



INDUSTRY AND CITY UFE, AND THE FAMILY 103 

be complete or adequate without vigorous and comprehensive 
measures for arresting the forces which tend to poison the germ, 
the very source of life and inheritance. The aim of eugenics 
is not limited to selection of parents ; it includes all the measures 
which promise to improve the quality of the parents or to prevent 
their degradation. 

It is slow and uncertain work to persuade the capable to 
attempt to outpopulate the defective and abnormal; society in 
self-defense must seek to diminish the causes of degeneration. 

Several able writers on eugenics have declared that we can- 
not look to improvement of conditions for improvement of the 
human race. Granting that better food and housing will not 
enable tuberculous and paralytic parents to produce healthy off- 
spring, it remains true that impaired wages, nutrition, and whole- 
some conditions would prevent the banning of a new series 
of deg^ded and exhausted persons. 

It seems to be established, and admitted by Weismann, that 
the germ cells in their most intimate structure can be so affected 
by poisons and even by malnutrition as to transmit certain evil 
effects to offspring. Therefore it is hot necessary to enter upon 
a discussion of the controverted topic of th^ inheritance of ac- 
quired characters. The sperm cells or the ovum or both may be so 
damaged in the parent or parents that the offspring will show 
the consequences. Forel writes : 

By blastophthory {KeimverderhnisY I understand .... the effects of 
all directly abnormal and disturbing influences which affect the protoplasm 
of the germ cells, whose inherited determinants in this way are injuriously 
altered. Blastophthory works in this way on germs not yet united by 
means of their bearers (Triiger) and in that way effects a beginning of what 
we call inherited degeneration, of whatever kind it may be. 

These evil results then pass on from this beginning to subse- 
quent generations. Among the poisons which have the power 
to damage the germ cells Forel mentions especially alcohol. 
Idiots, insane, epileptics, dwarfs, psychopathic persons are the 
issue of alcoholized parents, parents who themselves may have 
been vigorous and sound in every part. 

* Blastophthory (Keirnvtrdtrbnis) ; cf. Aug. Forel, DU sejtuslh Fragt, p. 33. 



I04 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

This brings into consideration the facts relating to other 
poisons; as the toxic results of tuberculosis and other diseases, 
of lead poisoning, phosphorus poisoning, and nicotine in strong 
doses. The so-called industrial or professional diseases gain a 
new interest in this connection. 

The contest with venereal diseases, both gonorrhea and 
S)rphilis, becomes significant for eugenics. It is well known that 
syphilis acquired by a parent sometimes destroys or cripples the 
offspring. Gonorrhea is a common cause of blindness; the in- 
herited effects upon the constitution of the children require 
serious investigation. Dr. E. Kraepelin says : 

We know some of the important and widespread causes of insanity, the 
combating of which lies not only within the realm of the duties, but also 
of the powers of the state. The first of these is the abuse of alcohol .... 
About one-third of the surviving children of dipsomaniac parents will 
become epileptics. According to Bourneville more than one-half of the 
idiotic children proved to have alcoholized parents.* 

This author, with many others, emphasizes the frequent con- 
nection between even slight intoxication and the occasion of vene- 
real diseases with all their sad retinue of suffering, especially 
to women. 

Some educational advantage may be gained by laws requiring 
a medical certificate of health from a public physician as a condi- 
tion of receiving a license to marry. This measure would cause 
many a young man to reflect before he brought upon himself a 
loathsome and highly infectious disease. But such a law would 
have little influence on unscrupulous persons who satisfy their 
appetites without regard to marriage laws. They must be reached 
by other means. 

Competition with the inferior and the unfit is one of the in- 
fluences which cause thoughtful and provident persons to limit 
their offspring. This was the conclusion of one of our greatest 
economists. President Francis A. Walker: 

Whatever were the causes which checked the growth of the native 
population, they were neither physiological nor climatic They were 
mainly social and economic; and chief among them was the access of vast 

*Die psychiatrischen Aufgdben des Staates, p. 2. 



INDUSTRY AND CITY UFE, AND THE FAMILY 105 

hordes of foreign immigrants, bringing with them a standard of living at 
which our own people revolted." 

Now, the excessive increase of any undesirable class will "give 
a shock to the principle of population" among persons of higher 
standards of life. Thousands of persons of the Society of 
Friends and others who would not or could not own slaves emi- 
grated from the South before the Civil War to escape competi- 
tion with slave labor and from the sense of social inferiority 
which went with manual labor. But now there is no way of 
escape; therefore the families of superior ability and higher 
standards grow smaller. To encourage persons of normal life 
and civilized standards to have more children some better guar- 
anties must be given them by government that these children will 
not be driven to the wall by immigrants of a lower order. This 
is not an argument against immigration, but only against the 
immigration of persons who can never be induced to demand a 
civilized scale of life. A great deal is justly said of a "simple 
life;" but that should not mean a return to savage life. 

Any discussion of the unfavorable effects of urban life on the 
family must give large room for these forces which tend directly 
or indirectly to enfeeble or prevent offspring. The vices which 
destroy, the tmwholesome physical conditions, and the excessive 
competition in cities of the North with immigrants are all amen- 
able to action by concerted volition; they are not results of in- 
evitable forces outside the raage of human choices. 

^Discussions in Economics and Statistics, VoL II, p. 4^6. 



RURAL LIFE AND THE FAMILY 



PRESIDENT KENYON L. BUTTERFIELD 
Amherst, Mass. 



This paper does not pretend to be a scientific statement of all 
of the reactions which environing conditions may bring to bear 
'upon the family living in the open country. So far as I am 
aware, this whole matter has not been woriced out by anyone 
with any d^iree of fulness. I wish that some of our sociologists 
would take up seriously the study of the effect of typical rural 
life, not only upon the rural family, but upon the rural individual, 
and determine the relationships between the rural environment 
and the rural mind. I am here merely setting down some observa- 
tions which are the result of considerable association with the 
rural people in different parts of the country, and of some 
attempts to study the structure and influence of various rural 
social institutions. 

Isolation is the chief social characteristic of rural life. But, 
so far as isolation is a physical fact, rather than a state of mind, 
the word must be used in a wholly relative sense. Isolation of 
country life varies all the way from the occasional hamlets and 
villages of the closely populated irrigation districts, to the genuine 
loneliness of the almost boundless stock ranges, with all grada- 
tions between. It is, however, the one great fact that stands out in 
any comparison between the social environment of a family living 
on the land, and a family living in the town or city. 

This isolation is a separateness of the farming class from 
other classes. Consequently, a family belonging to this separated 
class must be influenced by the characteristics and the standards 
common to the class as a whole. It is also an isolation of families. 
A very small proportion of our American farm families live in 
hamlets or villages. The families of the farm are scattered; 
few farm homes are closely adjacent, at least from the point of 
view of the city man. 

io6 



RURAL UFE AND THE FAMILY 107 

Of course it is to be observed that physical contact in the city 
means nothing, from the family point of view. Contiguity does 
not necessarily breed acquaintanceship. Probably the mere fact 
of farmhouses being twenty rods apart, or half a mile apart, is 
not so significant as the fact that separateness of the farming 
class and scattered farm homes produce a lack of social friction 
between individuals, between families, and between classes, that 
has a significant bearing on all those concerned. 

What, now, are the chief influences of this isolated mode of 
living upon the life and characteristics of the family, considered 
as a unit? I list them as follows : 

1. Family life in the country is tied to the industry of the 
country. This imquestionably makes for interest in the work 
of the farm. Of course, it may also result in hatred of farm 
work. It makes drudgery easy. It makes it difficult to get away 
from one's work. But this much is true, nevertheless, that the 
farm family may be considered an industrial, as well as a social, 
unit, whether the influences of this condition are good or bad, or 
both. It probably has both good and bad effects; but, on the 
social side, it certainly has a significant result which may become 
our second point : 

2. There is a co-operative imity in the farm family that is 
rather striking. The whole family is engaged in work that is of 
common interest. The whole family often "turns to," when a 
task is to be carried out. When the holiday comes, the whole 
family takes part in it. Compared with the average city family, 
individual interests are subordinated. Each member of the 
family knows what is going on. Each is in touch with the 
plans of the head of the family, in general if not in detail. The 
mother's work is ever before the eyes of all the members of the 
family, including the boys and men. This co-operative unity must 
have a powerful effect upon the life of the family. Perhaps it 
has a tendency to give that life too much of an industrial char- 
acter. There may be too much inclination to "talk shop." There 
may be too little opportunity for the cultivation of the heart life, 
or of the hearth life, of the family; but there is a certain solid- 



I08 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

arity in the farm family that makes for the permanency of the 
institution. 

3. Speaking particularly now of the youth growing up in the 
farm family, it can hardly be gainsaid that family life in the 
open country is remarkably educative. First, by reason of the 
fact that both the boys and girls, from even tender years, learn 
to participate in real tasks. They do not merely play at doing 
things, they do them. They achieve real results. They take part 
in the world's work; and, secondly, by association with older 
heads in this work, by having a share in these real problems, by 
understanding at an early age the good or evil results that come 
from definite lines of action, there comes a certain maturity of 
mind, a certain sureness of touch, when a job is to be done, that 
must be a powerful means of development, particularly in an age 
when the achievement of tasks is the keynote of success. 

4. I believe that, on the whole, the moral standards of the 
farm family, as a family, are kept on a very high plane; partly 
by the fact of farm interests already alluded to, and partly by 
the openness of life prevalent in country districts. There are in 
the country few hiding places for vice, and vice usually has 
enough modesty not to wish to stalk abroad. I do not mean to 
say that the moral influences of the country are only good ; but 
I do say that, so far as the purity of the family as an institution 
is concerned, the country mode of living is conducive to a very 
high standard. 

Thus far I have named those reactions of the environment 
upon the rural family which seem to be, on the whole, favorable. 
There is something to say on the other side. 

I. Probably, on the whole, mediocre standards are encour- 
aged. If you are brought up in the Ghetto of New York, and 
manage to get money enough together, you can move up on Fifth 
Avenue, if you want to. The average farmer doesn't move un- 
less he moves to town, or to a new r^on. If low standards 
prevail in the community, a particular family is likely to find itself 
influenced by these lower standards. There is a tendency to level 
down, because of the law of moral gravitation, and because it 
takes a long time to elevate any community standard. The 



RURAL UFE AND THE FAMILY 109 

average country communities are illustrating some of the dis- 
advantages, as well as some of the advantages, of democracy. In 
some farm communities, the presence of hired laborers in the 
family circle has been distinctly deleterious to good social cus- 
toms, if nothing else. In the country there is a tendency toward 
a general neighborhood life on the social side. There is a proba- 
bility that aspiration, for either personal or community ideals, 
will get a set away from the farm, with the result that these 
ideals are likely to lapse in the country. 

2. A great deal of farm life is of such a character that it 
makes it very hard for the mother of the family. Perhaps the 
effects of isolation are more abiding in her case than in that of 
any other member of the family. This is not to give currency to 
the popular, but I think erroneous, notion that there is a larger 
proportion of insanity among farm women than among other 
classes ; but it cannot be denied that the type of work in the farm 
home in many communities, and few social opportunities, are 
likely to give a narrowness that must have its result on the 
general life of the family. 

3. The health of the average individual of the country is all 
that could be desired, at least during the earlier years; but it is 
not unfair to say that the sanitary conditions, from the public 
point of view, are not good in the average open country. This 
must have considerable effect, in the long run, upon the health of 
the family, and must have a bearing upon the development of 
family life. 

4. There is, on the whole, a serious lack of recreative life in 
the open country, and this fact unquestionably has a strong in- 
fluence upon the atmosphere of the average farm home. It tends 
to give a certain hardness and bareness that are not proper soil 
for the finer fruits of life. 

5. The lack of steady income of the farmer's family is a 
factor that has a great deal to do with the attitude of the members 
of the family toward life, toward expenditures, toward culture 
wants, and toward those classes of people that have salaries or 
other steady income. 

It should be noted that country life develops certain traits in 



no THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

the individual, which, without any special regard to the question 
of family life, must nevertheless influence the general spirit of 
the family. I refer particularly to the intense individualism of 
the country, and the lack of the co-operative spirit There is 
neighborliness in the country; there is intense democracy; there 
is a high sense of individual responsibility; there is initiative; but 
this over-development of the individual results in anaemic social 
life, which in turn reacts powerfully upon the general life of the 
family. 

To my mind, the advantages of the country, in respect to 
family life, far outweigh its disadvantages. This statement must, 
of course, be understood to have in mind the great mass of farm 
families, as compared with the great mass of urban families of 
somewhat similar industrial and social standards. I make no 
defense of many woe-b^one rural communities that can be found 
in all sections of the country. But I do believe that, on the whole, 
the family life of the open country, whether judged with respect 
to its intrinsic worth, its effect on the growing children, its 
permanency as a social institution, or its usefulness as a factor 
in our national civilization, is worthy of high praise. 



DISCUSSION 
Paul U. Kellogg^ New York City 

There are four points which I should like to make. In such a discussion 
I am under no special obligation to relate them to each other. 

In his annual address President Patten made a plea for the pushing out 
of the economist and his works into practical affairs. Three years ago in a 
talk which he gave to a group of visitors of a charitable society, he told 
them that dealing as they were with lop-sided families, families which had 
something ailing with them, they were bound to get lop-sided views of 
relief. They should study for every family they dealt with on a philan- 
thropic basb, one normal family. This preachment strikes me as indicating 
a line of joint activity for the economist and the social worker — where the 
broad view of the one and the methods of the other could be brought 
together.^ The case records of charitable societies have long been store- 
houses of valuable social information. They have been analyzed on the 
basis of the causes which throw these families into positions of dependence. 

In the Pittsburgh survey we have applied these methods of investigation 
and record-taking to normal families, which may not be thrown into depend- 



RURAL UFE AND THE FAMILY III 

ence but are thrown into economic distress and lessened economic efficiency, 
by disease or accident. We have taken out as units for study not the cases 
applying for charitable relief, but certain geographical areas or periods of 
time. Comparingcitiesof corresponding size for the past five years, Pittsburgh 
has ranked first and highest in both t3rphoid fever and industrial casualties. 
These two are the prime expression on the one hand of civic neglect, and 
on the other, industrial hazard and ruthlessness. Our purpose was to 
measure the social effects on the people themselves. Here we had units 
more compelling than death statistics, or tax-costs. 

This was illustrated in the economic study of t3rphoid fever by Mr. Frank 
E. Wing, associate director, who collected data for six wards for a year, 
showing the proportion of wage-earners among typhoid patients, the income 
before and since, the number of weeks sick, the loss in wages by patients 
and by those who are obliged to give up work to care for them, sickness 
expenditure for doctors, nurses, medicines, foods, funerals; and the less 
tangible but even more severe tax involved in lessened vitality, lessened 
earning power, and broken-up homes, which follow in the wake of typhoid. 
Of 1,029 cases in six wards reported in one year, 448 cases were found and 
studied. Of these 26 died. One hundred and eighty-seven wage-earners lost 
1,901 weeks' work. Other wage-earners, not patients, lost 322 weeks — ^a 
total loss in wages of $28,899. The cost of 90 patients treated in hospitals at 
public or private expense was $4,165; of 338 patients cared for at home, 
$21,000 in doctors' bills, nurses, ice, foods, medicines ; of 26 funerals, $3,186. 
The result was a total cost of $58,262 in less than half the cases of six wards 
in one year— wards in which both income and sickness expense were at a 
minimum. But there were other even more serious drains. A girl of 
twenty-two, who worked on stogies, was left in a very nervous condition, 
not so strong as before, and consequently could not attain her former speed. 
A blacksmith will probably never work at his trade with his former strength. 
A sixteen-year-old girl developed tuberculosis and was left in a .weakened 
physical condition. A tailor cannot work as long hours as before and was 
reduced $1 a week in wages. A boy of eight was very nervous, would not 
sit still in school, and was rapidly becoming a truant. 

Similarly in the case of industrial accidents. At this morning's session 
Miss Eastman has told you of the economic incidence as found by her 
analysis of the 500 industrial deaths in Allegheny in the course of the year 
studied, where half of those killed were under thirty years of age, where 
half were getting less than $15 per week, where half had families to support, 
and where, of these latter cases, less than half received any contribution 
whatever from the employer toward the income loss. 

Dr. Patten has told us that the greatest need of the generation is the 
socialization of law. Here we were putting court decisions and the master- 
and-servant law to a pragmatic test, apart from any legal theories of liberty 
of contract and assumption of risk. How does the common law work out 



112 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

in practice? How does it cash in when it comes to the common welfare? 
Similar card systems have since been made use of in Wisconsin and Illinois. 

My point is, then, that the family affords a responsive, delicate litmus 
for testing many of the economic facts of the present-day social order. Its 
usefulness as such is only as yet partly explored. The serious studies 
recently made of standards of living — not of dependent families, nor even 
of normal families under emergent stress, but just the everyday economic 
issues of life, are perhaps the purest examples of such scientific treatment 
Such studies as Mr. Chapin has made illustrate the large body of social facts 
available from such sources. 

My second point is that we are dealing in Pittsburgh with overloaded 
families. In agricultural and domestic industry great numbers of household 
operations were performed as by-products by the male workers. Thus the 
water supply for a man's kine and for his household were identical. Not 
only is this changed with the division of labor, but the household must be 
maintained amid city conditions where the single family unit cannot master 
many wants, and in industrial towns badly located for any purpose other 
than production. My point is illustrated by a dispute between the superin- 
tendent of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Health and the controller of the city, 
since deceased, a bluff, honest, old-fashioned saver of city funds. The 
superintendent of the Bureau of Health wanted a rubbish-removal system; 
the controller held that rubbish removal was a householder's private duty. 
"It is as if," said Dr. Edwards, "every householder in Pittsburgh used his 
ashes to build his front walks, lit his morning fires with old newspapers, 
and fed his swill to the pigs." Dumping-places are few and remote in 
Pittsburgh, and the results have been that every alley, gutter, and corner 
has festered with refuse; and the problem of keeping the city clean and 
well has been a hundred fold increased. Long, scientific, medical names 
on a death certificate, translated in common parlance, were nothing more 
than a filthy tin can plus a house fly. 

Similarly, we find Pittsburgh for the last ten years knowing its typhoid 
problem was a water problem and yet depending for immunity upon bottled 
water at 15c per bottle; and we find 50,000 old individual privy vaults in 
the city proper. Time does not admit of the expansion of this idea, from 
these homely illustrations to some of the more debatable undertakings of 
the family analyzed yesterday by Mrs. Gilman. Miss Butler's studies of 
women in industry, for instance, go to show that in Pittsburgh the whole 
tone of wages in certain women-employing trades is fixed by the assumption 
that the girl is half supported at home. My point is that the sooner we 
disencumber the family of many tasks it is not equipped to handle under 
modern conditions, the quicker it will be in position to perform its real 
functions. 

Homestead is an example, as Miss Byington has described it, of how 
the whole task of civilization is thrown back upon the home. Here is a 



RURAL UFE AND THE FAMILY 113 

town which is created by the greatest steel plant in the world; one of the 
master industries of the country, protected by our national tariff policies 
as few industries are protected, and studied at the close of one of the greatest 
periods of prosperity the country has known. What has that prosperity 
meant to the workers? Here, on the other hand, we have a town where 
time is measured since the strike when associated effort among men was 
crushed out, there has been no organization or civic life to meet the 
community problems. The mill, and the town because of the mill, have 
thrown the burden on the family life of the place. And in many things 
above the average, we find Homestead a town with gulched streets like a 
mining district and high death-rates, with, tmtil a year ago, ungraded, un- 
guarded railroad crossings, with rank water and no clean public recreation. 
It is a town where a majority of the workers are left no leisure by the 
mill to bear their share of the family responsibilities, and where, stated 
roughly, the families of 50 per cent, of the workers must choose between 
eating insufficient food or living in un-American homes, between giving 
children a normal life or owning a home. 

It is a town which sums up the overloading of family life. Eliminating 
these encumbrances, the standard of living-studies should afford us clearer 
notions of just what functions we should expect of families, and the 
minimums which are demanded for their performance — ^minimums of com- 
fort, as expressed in rentals and clothing, minimums of refreshment, as ex- 
pressed in food and leisure, and minimums of reproduction, as expressed in 
terms of strong physical parenthood, household equipment for caring for the 
young, and child-training. On the test of these standards public opinioii 
could base its judgments as to immigration, hours, wages, working-men's 
compensation in case of accident, and other influences that affect or jeopar- 
dize these standards. 

My third point is that the household, existing against these odds, is 
made the goad for that damnable driving of men to which Mr. Devine has 
referred. The mill workers are for the most part tonnage men. They are 
paid on out-put. As Mr. Fitch states in his report, when the rate of pay 
is judiciously cut from time to time, this tonnage system of payment becomes 
the most effective scheme for inducing speed yet devised. Whatever a man's 
earnings may be, high or low, his family adjusts itself to that basis and that 
becomes his minimum of comfort. The man who has had six dollars a 
day and is reduced to four dollars has a harder time getting along on that 
than the man who never has been able to develop four-dollar tastes. The 
mere possibility of greater earnings than any yet enjoyed does not suffice 
to rouse men to the required degree. Only a reduction accomplishes that, 
for it makes it necessary to struggle to reach once again the old wage which 
was the minimum of comfort. 

My last point has to do with the relation of the family to the dynamic 
character of the population of our industrial districts. In the Royal Museum 



114 T-J/E AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

of Munich is a group of models of mediaeval towns, carved out of wood. 
The spires and the markets, the city wall and gates, the houses, gardens, and 
out-buildings are shown with a fidelity that has outlived the centuries. 
There was entrenched the fixity of things. A man was his father's son. He 
was burgher, or freeman, or serf, as his father was burgher, or freeman, 
or serf. His looms and his spinning wheels and his vats were as his father 
had contrived them. He lived in the house of his fathers and it served him 
well. Pittsburgh is the antithesis of all this. It is all motion. The modem 
industrial community is not a tank, but a flow. Not the capacity but the 
currents of its life are important Sixty per cent, of the working population 
of Homestead are imskilled laborers. The great majority of these are new- 
comers, foreign-born. In one of the plants of the Pittsburgh district, the 
employment agent hired 20,000 men in one year to keep up the pay-roll of 
10,000. Unless the skilled worker keeps himself free to sell his labor in the 
highest market, he is economically at a disadvantage. 

I should not want to claim for this idea of flow as the distinctive element 
in industrial community life, such a revolution of conceptions as Professor 
Qark wrought in defining the production of wealth in terms of a flow of 
utilities. But two things are to be noted. First, that it strengthens the 
demand that we relieve the family in an industrial community from many 
of the old household responsibilities. Sanitation cannot be left to Tom, 
Dick, and Harry if they are on the go. Local health authority must be 
developed with strength and scientific standards enough to maintain clear 
water, adequate sewerage, good drainage. Men must have leisure enough to 
back up this sort of administration with effective citizenship. The lodgings 
of the floating immigrant labor force cannot be left to boarding- bosses and 
petty landlords. 

The second point is that civic conditions and social agencies must be 
adapted so that mobile family units shall not be at a disadvantage. Let me 
illustrate in the matter of shelter, by pointing to the man who lives in a 
company house, who rents from a local landlord, and to the man who buys 
his own house. The English co-operative housing movement by which 
a workman buys, not a building but stock in a housing company, is a move- 
ment to give the sense of ownership without clogging mobility. 

Similarly the ordinary form of accident-relief association ties the work- 
man up tight, while a rational form of working-men's compensation would 
give him emergency resources whatever his changes in employment and 
whatever the disrupting influences of industry upon the family. 

The development of such schemes is not more communistic than the 
development of organized work in a mill is socialism. They may be defined 
as giving elements of stability to the family other than geographical. They 
should lessen the overburdening of the family. By that degree they should 
equip the workmen to the more readily withstand exploitation and advance 
his living standards. 



SOME QUESTIONS CONCERNING THE HIGHER 
EDUCATION OF WOMEN 



PROFESSOR D. COLLIN WELLS 
Dartmouth College 



This brief paper is intended to afford an opportunity for dis- 
cussion and makes no claim to original investigation or new 
conclusions. Statistics upon the subject-matter are imsatisfactory 
and practically unattainable at the present time but such informa- 
tion as we have seems to be unquestioned and sufficiently sug- 
gestive for our careful consideration. We are to consider the 
modem education of women in as far as it is different, in amount 
and kind, from the education formerly afforded them. Until 
quite recently the educational privileges of women were not 
greater than those now afforded in the grammar grades of our 
best public schools. The training of women in high school, col- 
lege, and professional schools is a late nineteenth-century notion 
and some of the new questions raised by it are our present 
concern. 

Permit me to say at the start that, in my opinion, the whole 
movement is natural and inevitable. Political philosophers would 
say that it is a logical corollary from the principles of social 
democracy. Others that it is the outcome of the effort toward 
self-realization. It is the demand of native powers to be given 
a chance to develop freely. In it the insistence of the human 
personality upon the right to express itself has come to full 
consciousness. In it women protest that they are no longer to 
be r^^rded merely as mothers of men or as housekeepers to 
minister to the comforts of men but as autonomous persons with 
all the privileges appertaining to such. If motherhood and the 
activities of the home satisfy a woman of today she will be con- 
tent with these, if they do not sufficiently express her personality 
enlightened justice will afford her appropriate educational oppor- 
tunities equal to those of any man. To continue to exclude half 

"S 



Il6 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

of humanity from the cultivation and exercise of native talent 
would appear to involve economic wastes as well as an a-priori 
assumption of the inferiority of woman. 

This hospitality toward woman's aspirations does not exclude 
the admission that there are essential psychic differences between 
the two sexes. In the cultivation of her talents she is still ex- 
pressing a woman's self, not a man's. Her spiritual satisfactions 
need not be identical with those of men but this is a matter for 
her to decide and each woman, in a free community, may be 
safely trusted to feel her way toward her own decisions. Paren- 
thetically be it observed that this logically involves allowing such 
women to vote as care to exercise the suffrage. Our principle 
is far from meaning that the education of women should be 
identical with that of men. It may be and it may not be— experi- 
ence alone can decide. Two considerations make us pause here. 
The first is that our experiment in giving women the same educa- 
tion as men is too recent to allow us to draw a satisfactory con- 
clusion in this matter. In the end, if she wants an identical educa- 
tion and it suits her, she will deserve it and continue to get it. Just 
here it may be proper to express the opinion that there is no more 
wholesome place for girls of sound health and considerable intel- 
lectual capacity, during the trying period from eighteen to twenty- 
two years of age, than at a well-regulated college. They are there 
better off, physically and morally, as well as intellectually, than 
at home in so-called society. The second consideration that 
makes us thoughtful as to the details and methods of education 
for women is that these must be adjusted somewhat to the fact 
that a woman is after all a woman. For her, educational methods 
should be related to wifehood and motherhood, whatever else 
they may strive to accomplish. 

In the majority of cases a woman must be a domestic econo- 
*mist and understand the management of a household, if not quite 
in Aristotle's sense of the term. Naturally, also, she may be 
expected to find her deepest joys in motherhood. In this she 
differs from man only in conditions set by the accidents of a 
physical process. His nature is equally incomplete and imsatis- 
fied without parenthood and the home. If it appears, in too many 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN 117 

cases, not to be so it is because of a spiritual atrophy due to the 
vices of an aging civilization and furnishes a warning rather than 
a principle of conduct for women to adopt. It should, however, 
be remembered that fatherhood may be momentary while mother- 
hood must be continuous. This inevitably permits him to devote 
a large part of his energies to external affairs, as it confines a 
woman considerably to her home. Only in appearance does this 
lessen the participation of the father in the nurture of children. 
His personal influence is just as constantly and imperatively 
needed for their wholesome development as is the mother's, only 
it is of a different kind. May not the loss of personal contact 
with the father in the artificial urban life of civilized communities 
be a more common source of moral weakness than we suspect? 
My argument, you see, tends toward an equality in the sacred 
obligations of parenthood and condemns both husband and wife 
for the neglect of this fundamental duty. At the same time the 
father can be much of the time away from home and remain a 
good father while the woman cannot be and remain a good 
mother; unless we become disciples of Plato and substitute the 
public nursery for the home, in contemplating which case we can 
only exclaim with him "Good Heavens, what skill will then be 
required of our rulers!*' 

Let us now go a bit deeper into the question, in expressing the 
obvious opinion that it is for the advantage of mankind that 
superior women should become mothers. This is for reasons 
both of nature and nurture. As for nature, there is greater 
probability that the offspring of superior women will also be 
superior. This is fortunately not a certainty. If it were we 
should abolish all human incentives and much of morality. Intel- 
lectual ability is not a dominant Mendelian character that breeds 
true to parental type. What Galton calls "filial regression" pre- 
vents it. The "pull of the race" which keeps us sane, keeps us 
somewhere around the average. But, in the words of Karl 
Pearson, 

Exceptional fathers produce exceptional sons at a rate three to six 
times as great as non-exceptional — ^the superior stock prodtlfces above the 
average at over twice the rate of the inferior stock. Pairs of exceptional 



Ii8 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

parents produce exceptional sons at a rate more than ten times as great 
as pairs of non-exceptional parents.^ 

Obviously the greater the number of children there are to 
such parents, e. g., when both are college graduates, the greater 
the likely proportion of ability in a community for social selec- 
tion to work upon. Reid has expressed this as follows: 

We cannot improve races of plants and animals by improving the 
conditions under which they exist Such a course benefits the individual 
but results in racial degeneration. The race can be improved only by 
restricting parentage to the finest individuals.' 

Certainly we cannot expect to improve it by limiting the parent- 
age of the superior individuals. As for nurture. The environ- 
ment of the superior woman's children should be more favoraMe 
than the average. She is able to apply intelligence as well as 
character to that most delicate of all tasks, the proper training of 
children. She can wisely cultivate natural interests and uncon- 
sciously control as the spontaneous affection of childhood ripens 
into the respect of maturer years. Women must be intelligent 
to win that respect from their well-educated children, particularly 
from their sons. In this matter of nurture a mother's ability and 
training may be thwarted by an evil inheritance in the child. It 
is very untrue to facts to suppose that even an ideal environment 
can make anything of anybody. Reid grossly exaggerates in 
saying : 

According to the experience he has, an average baby may become a 
fool or a wise man, a yokel or a statesman, a savage or a civilized man, 
a saint or a thief.* 

After all we cannot escape the meshes of heredity — ^talent is bom 
and not made, and the better nurture of the one child of a superior 
woman will not offset the certain loss resulting from the restric- 
tion in the number of chances of a happy inheritance. 

Now it is just this restriction in favorable chances and limita- 
tion of the better stock that the higher education of women 
appears to involve. This in several ways. To beg^n with, it 
seems to mean for college g^rls a lowering of the expected mar- 

^Phil. Trans., CXCV, 38. 
*Soc. Papers, III, 10. 
*Soc, Papers, 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN 119 

riage-rate. Probably not half of the graduates of women's 
colleges ever marry whereas nearly 90 per cent of the women 
in the general population marry. At Bryn Mawr the marriage- 
rate for classes at least ten years out of college is apparently 
about 37 per cent At Smith College about 45 per cent of the 
women of the ten classes from 1879 to 1888 have married and 
the published statistics of Professor Thomdike are to the same 
conclusion. It is of course true that the marriage-rate of the 
social classes from which the college girls come is much lower 
than that of the general population. How much lower we do 
not know. The statistics already published upon this point are 
far from conclusive and it is certainly true that in our democratic 
society college girls come from all classes and those who are poor 
are more likely to contemplate earning their own living in single 
blessedness than are the rich. Are there not considerations both 
of sexual selection and of duty to the commimity which should 
make the marriage-rate of these brighter college-educated girls 
higher than the average in their social class ? 

In the next place the modem education of women involves a 
postponement of marriage at least two years for girls who stop 
upon the completion of the high-school course and much longer 
for college graduates. The former is probably desirable, the 
latter may be, but raises economic and psychological obstacles to 
marriage and certainly lowers the birth-rate. The birth-rate 
among college women is about half the normal. With the above- 
mentioned classes at Smith College there are about two children 
to each mother while in the general population there are upwards 
of four. With half marrying and less than two children to a 
marriage the college women are not replacing themselves. This 
is exactly the condition that prevails among the graduates of 
Harvard and Yale. Should this be so? Should not the trained 
woman take a higher view of her obligations to the race? As 
J. Arthur Thompson says : 

Is there not need for getting rid of a prudery of selfishness which 
keeps some of the fitter types from recognizing that they have another 
contribution to make to the race besides their work.* 

* Heredity, S3^* 



I20 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

It is also, as Shallmayer has shown, a mistake to suppose that a 
lower birth-rate is entirely made good by a correspondingly 
lower death-rate. What is the result? As Lapouge says: 

If one group has a birth-rate of three and the other four the propor- 
tion between the two becomes in a generation 3:4. At the third genera- 
tion 9:16. At the fourth the favored group forms 70 per lOo, the other 
30. This requires only a century. 

The lowered birth-rate of the educated may in part be pur- 
posed and in part incident to nervous activity upon the assump- 
tion that individuation and fecundity are antagonistic. As Sa- 
leeby expresses it : 

In view of the antagonism between individuation and genesis, which 
Spencer discovered, the very best, being engaged in making the utmost of 
their individual lives, have less energy to spare for reproduction — ^that is 
to say for the racial life. One cannot write a system of philosophy and 
successfully bring up a large family.* 

A parable may illustrate, in a homely fashion, this inverse rela- 
tion of quality and fertility. My garden recently produced a 
marvellous squash. It was a dream of a squash, such as falls to 
the lot of few to taste. A command went to the kitchen that every 
seed must be saved. To which the reply was that there were no 
seeds. "Impossible! No one ever heard of a squash without 
seeds;" but investigation discovered only a small seed cavity, in 
which were a few minute atrophied seeds and among them a 
single developed one, malformed and almost certain not to pro- 
duce its kind — ^but the squash was delectable ! 

So much for the biology of quality! Socially and psycho- 
logically the lowered birth-rate may be sufficiently explained by 
the incompatibility between motherhood and the gratification of 
the multifarious tastes and interests of a broadened life. As 
Munsterberg expresses it : 

From whatever side we look at it, the self-assertion of woman exalts 
her at the expense of the family — ^perfects the individual but injures 
society, makes the American women perhaps the finest flower of civiliza- 
tion, but awakens at the same time serious fears for the propagation of 
the American race.' 

* Soc, Papers, 232, 
*The Americans, 583. 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN I2i 

Or as Tonnies says : 

The rise of intellectual qualities also involves, under given conditions, 
a further decay of moral feeling, nay of sympathetic affections generally. 
Intelligence promotes egotism and pleasure-seeking, very much in contra- 
diction to the interest of the race/ 

To speak plainly, children have become, to many women, a 
nuisance, or at least unwelcome beings of an alien domestic world 
which years of intellectual training have unfitted the college 
woman to like or understand. Their environment has awakened 
their interests and then these imperious interests dominate their 
lives. Various as are the causes of this low birth-rate the eflfect 
is a comparative sterilization of presumably superior stocks. This 
does not appear to be a matter of much present moment but is 
sure to become alarming with the growth of the college habit 
among girls. In the United States, in 1905, there were 391,000 
girls in public high schools, 43,000 women normal students, and 
45,000 women in higher institutions. This latter number was 
only 10,761 in 1890, an increase of 400 per cent, in fifteen years 
while population certainly did not increase 40 per cent. The 
student of history condemns the celibacy of the Catholic priest- 
hood from the selectionist standpoint — ^what will he have to say 
of the celibacy of tens of thousands of the most capable women 
of the country? 

Now there certainly is a racial obligation, the obligation of 
motherhood and, let me add, an equal obligation of fatherhood. 
It may be admitted that if this obligation is incompatible with 
higher duties it ceases to be binding; but it should be borne in 
mind that this incompatibility is sometimes of woman's own 
making, sometimes pure selfishness, sometimes merely notional, 
and seldom of fact The standard of social values is set by our- 
selves in the long run and possibly we may come again to value 
the more domestic virtues and the quality of self-sacrifice. You 
may object that a great woman teacher of hundreds of children 
may be doing more for mankind than by having children of her 
own ; which is quite true, but is not a Kantian principle capable 
of very wide application. The fundamental obligation is, after 

^ Soc Papers, I, 41. 



122 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

all, at home and nature avenges its neglect upon individuals and 
people. In another way J. Arthur Thompson expresses this 
when he says : 

Is there any truth in the inference that failure in reproductive power 
is an expression of Nature's verdict against dis-social isolation of privi- 
leged classes, against every self-contradictory denial of the solidarity of 
the social organism?* 

We can by no means abolish the grim facts of inheritance and 
selection from human society. Do not misunderstand me. My 
sympathies are heartily with the higher education of women but 
some of its present biological effects are certainly questionable. 
The hopeful feature of it all is that these are in part unnecessary 
and can be avoided by a more enlightened moral code. 

From the higher education of women we have a right to 
anticipate two happy outcomes. Primarily it is likely, through 
sexual selection, to elevate men's notions of what character and 
conduct is becoming in them if they are to win educated 
women as wives. The real trouble, at the present time, is 
with the education of men. Their coarseness and vulgarity, even 
when college-men, makes them unfit husbands of collie women; 
they offend them. If there were more men of spiritual insight 
and moral elevation more college women would wish to marry. 
What else than celibacy can you expect when a college girl 
returns to a small community which all the college men, such 
as they are, have left for the city? She must go too, or remain 
single. In this there is often real tragedy. Helen Bosanquet had 
this in mind when she wrote of American women : 

Her disinclination to marriage is often intensified by the fact that she 
feels herself mentally superior to the man whose education has stopped 
short with his entry into practical life while she has continued her studies 
in school and college. 

There is, however, the persistent danger that the college girl's 
own qualification of intellectuality may become uncomfortable 
to men. A wise man in a recent number of the London Spectator 
wrote : 

Intellectual airs are disliked by both sexes. Dr. Johnson, while gen- 
erously defending the able woman in whatever direction her ability may 

* Heredity, 536. 



HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN 123 

lie, admitted that instructive and argumentative women are truly insuffer- 
able. "Supposing," said he, "a wife to be of a studious and argumentative 
turn, it would be very troublesome, for instance, if a woman should con- 
tinually dwell upon the subject of the Arian heresy!"* 

In the second place the increasing number of educated women 
in social and public life may supply that spirituality and ideality 
in which our modem world is so deficient. There are many 
dangers here, however. Among them is the danger that public 
life will become excessively emotional and even hysterical, in 
crises, and the greater danger that women themselves will be 
corrupted in competing with men for positions of material ad- 
vantage. If women's interests become materialized women will 
surely be degraded to the base level of all material competitions. 
Her strengfth has always been in her detachment. Is it not our 
conclusion that women should have the highest possible education 
— not that she may struggle with men but rather that she may 
the better rule humanity by those qualities and in that sphere in 
which she is most nearly divine? 

* spectator, November a, 1907. 



HOW DOES THE ACCESS OF WOMEN TO INDUS- 
TRIAL OCCUPATIONS REACT ON THE FAMILY? 



PROFESSOR U. G. WEATHERLY 
Indiana University 



Although economists have discarded the classical distinction 
between productive and unproductive labor, it is not uncommon 
still to hear work that results in the creation of no tangible wealth 
referred to as unproductive. In the census schedules housewives 
not otherwise employed are classed as n. g., "not gainful." So 
persistent is this fallacy that Professor Smart has thought it 
worth while to enumerate some of those forms of income which 
escape assessment and which are not measurable in money, and 
to point out the ways in which they actually augment the social 
income. Among these he reckons as "the greatest unpaid service 
of all" the work of women in the household. With an enthusiasm 
unusual in an economist he urges that this service does not merely 
save the cost of servants' wages, but that it produces results 
which wage-paid labor could not possibly achieve.^ 

Recent studies in biology indicates that race efficiency evolves 
in proportion to the differentiation between the sexes. Among 
the lowest orders of men, as also among the peasantry of Euro- 
pean states, male and female are strikingly similar in physique 
and dress, and the character of their labor does not materially 
differ. Even though it has been true since the crudest stages of 
culture that some distinction in labor functions was observed, 
industry itself in the earliest periods was so simple in character 
as to leave little room for separation. In the patriarchal family 
group there arose a more definite division of labor by which cer- 
tain functions were set aside as women's work. The primitive 
agricultural family group, of which pioneer American households 
are a survival, assigned to the wife's care those arts which were 
necessarily centered about the house, poultry-raising, gardening, 

^The DutribuHon of Income, 7o, 

124 



ACCESS OF WOMEN TO INDUSTRIAL OCCUPATIONS 1 25 

weaving, soap-making. This diflferentiation is to be explained, 
in general, on the theory of diverse capacities based on funda- 
mental sex difference. Professor Thomas believes that the 
greater motor activity of the male and the natural fixity and 
conservatism of the female account for the whole history of the 
division of labor on sex lines. "With respect to labor," says 
Aristotle's Economics, "the one sex is by nature capable of 
attending to domestic duties, but weak in duties out of doors ; the 
other is ill-adapted to works where repose is necessary, but able 
to perform those which demand exercise." While productive 
processes remained simple this diflferentiation of functions gen- 
erally involved nothing more than setting oflf to each sex definite 
parts of the same task. To the roaming, active male the share 
was the procuring of such materials for consumption as could 
be gotten only through aggressive eflfort afield. To the female 
fell work of a more sedentary character, chiefly that which was 
immediately connected with consumption. Of very high an- 
tiquity, therefore, is the habit, much exploited by recent humor- 
ists, of referring to the male head of the family as the "producer" 
or the "provider." Aristotle again, who certainly was not a 
humorist, declares that "man is adapted to provide things abroad, 
while woman's work is to preserve things at home." 

Two coincident changes have, within the past two centuries, 
profoundly aflfected the economic relations of the family. One is 
the concentration and specialization of industry following the 
industrial revolution, and the other is the shift from a predomi- 
nantly rural and agricultural to a predominantly urban type of 
life. As the most conservative of social units, the family has 
but slowly adjusted itself to these changes. The home-produc- 
tion economy has been gradually supplanted by the money econ- 
omy. Instead of being made in the home, nearly all constmiption 
goods in the city, and an increasing portion of them in the coun- 
try, are produced in specialized industries and purchased with 
money. 

In pointing out the extent and consequences of these changes 
Miss Heather-Bigg says : 

People who assert glibly that wives in the past had enough to do 



126 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

looking after their homes seldom realize what looking after the house 
meant one hundred and fifty years ago. It meant chopping wood, fetch- 
ing water, baking bread, spinning flax, weaving, knitting, pickling, curing, 
churning, preserving, washing. But now water is laid on into the house, 
bread is bought at the baker's, it is cheaper to buy garments than to 
make them, wood and coal are brought round to the door in carts, and 
jam and pickles, butter and bacon are all to be had from the general 
shop. So that now, for dwellers in big cities at any rate, ''looking after 
the house'' means only cleaning, cooking, washing, mending; care of chil- 
dren being the same in both cases. Even washing is ceasing to be the 
essentially domestic occupation it used to be, many women finding it more 
profitable to work at some trade in their homes and to give their washing 
out to a poorer neighbor to be done in municipal wash-houses or in the 
places set apart for washing in the model buildings.* 

Historically this is only the latest of a series of industrial 
transformations which have affected female labor. Very early 
in this series women relinquished agriculture to man, as she is 
now surrendering to the factory those handicrafts which she 
then retained as her peculiar care. She would now cease to be 
economically functional were there not open to her some alterna- 
tive sphere of activity. She might, where means permit, gfive 
herself up to the cultivation of her finer personal and social 
graces, and, frankly accepting the position of a parasite, become 
wholly dependent on man for material support. By means of 
specialized domestic service, housekeepers, nurses, governesses, 
she might even be freed from the burdens of home management 
Among portions of the so-called upper classes this is the actual 
situation. Or she might, by a more intensive devotion to purely 
domestic and maternal duties, find in these full play for her 
powers, even though the training of children has been partially 
socialized through such agencies as the school and the Sunday 
school. With the typical bourgeois family this is a not uncommon 
solution of the problem. In justification of it may be urged the 
unquestioned fact that home-making and the careful nuture of 
children are functions so vital that they are worth whatever 
they cost to society. Another alternative is woman's entrance 
into the new productive processes as a wage-worker, contributing 
to the family income her proper share in money earned in work 

* Economic Journal, IV, 57. 



ACCESS OF WOMEN TO INDUSTRIAL OCCUPATIONS 127 

at home for the market or in the workshop for the market. In 
this class the question is not whether women shall work, for they 
have always worked. It is rather a question of the conditions 
under which their wealth-creation shall proceed. Specifically it is 
a question not of work but of wage-earning. 

Insofar as it reacts on the structure of the family, two phases 
of the problem are to be clearly distinguished, (jne has to do 
with the class who work because they must, the other is connected 
with the status of those who work or who might work because 
they choose to be occupied rather than idle. Accepting as valid 
the logical deductions from census figures, the increase of female 
bread-winners in the United States is one of the most striking 
phenomena of recent decades. Growth in the numbers of gain- 
fully employed females has outstripped the increase both of 
male workers and of total female population. In 1900 one out 
of five of all females over ten years of age were in gainful pur- 
suits, and between 1870 and 1900 the number more than doubled.* 
In Massachusetts 22 out of every 100 females were employed in 
1870, as against 27 out of every 100 in 1900, and, while in the 
same period male workers increased 95 per cent., employed 
females increased 156 per cent. In the country as a whole the 
increase of employed women between 1890 and 1900 was 33 
per cent., that of males 23 per cent. Although this growth has 
accompanied the rapid development of the great industries in 
general, it is worthy of note that it has been most pronounced 
in those occupations which particularly appeal to the more intelli- 
gent and ambitious. The proportion in the textile trades has not 
kept pace with that which is employed in clerical and mercantile^ 
branches. In domestic and personal service also, once the leading 
field of female wage-earning, the increase in the last decade was 
only 38 per cent, while that in trade and transportation was 120 
per cent. 

Of unmarried women of native American stock a smaller 
proportion are employed than among the children of the foreign- 
bom. They undoubtedly contribute relatively less than do the 
foreign-bom directly to the general family treasury, and are 

'Special Census Report, Statistics of Women at Work, 191 ff. 



I30 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

Whenever from any cause industry ceases in a district, as it did 
during the siege of Paris or during the periodical cotton famines 
in England, the death-rate of infants declines, while the general 
death-rate increases, because mothers are then compelled to nurse 
their children. Manufacturing towns show a variation in infant 
death-rates so closely correlated with the number of employed 
married women as to leave little doubt about the cause and effect 
relation^ English and Continental medical authorities are agreed 
as to the disastrous results of the employment of mothers outside 
the home soon after confinement, and regulative legislation has 
been passed in all the progressive European states.® Cared for 
by older children or by friends, fed on unwholesome nourishment, 
dosed with narcotics, receiving only the fag-end of the mother's 
strength, children who outlive such an infancy have surely proved 
their fitness to survive. Day nurseries or philanthropies like the 
French Society for Nursing Mothers may minimize these evils for 
the relatively small numbers for whom their services are avail- 
able, but at best they are only make-shifts, and are poor substi- 
tutes for the close individual care upon which alone childhood 
can thrive. 

Acceptance of the "lump of labor" theory involves the rec- 
ognition of a sort of Gresham's law of labor, according to which 
cheap female labor would drive men out of industry. This 
fallacy is partially responsible for the attitude of labor organiza- 
tions toward the employment of women. But that there is much 
real supplanting of men by women may well be doubted. Mrs. 
Webb believes that if it exists at all in England it is only "to an 
infinitesimal extent."® The apparent transformation is attribut- 
able rather to necessary readjustment than to substitution. The 
transfer of so large a proportion of work from home to factory 

^Compare the figures for Dundee, where large numbers of married women 
are employed, with those of Paisley, where female workers predominate but 
where few married women are employed. Newman, Infant Mortality, xi6, 117, 

*A summary of European legislation on this subject is given in GliTer, 
Dangerous Trades, 53, 54. 

* Problems of Modem Industry, 101. Carroll D. Wright holds that in 
the United States women have largely displaced child-labor rather than that of 
men (Report of the Industrial Commission, VII, 74). 



ACCESS OF WOMEN TO INDUSTRIAL OCCUPATIONS 131 

has objectified woman's share in the total output without mate- 
rially increasing it. But even if it could ,be proved that she is a 
successful rival to man in getting labor away from him, woman 
remains an inferior bargainer for wages. Some of this inferi- 
ority is only apparent, explainable on the ground of smaller pro- 
ductivity, but there are numerous instances of smaller wages 
for equivalent work. This condition of women workers is due 
to a certain amateurishness inseparable from the sense of their 
impermanence, and to the absence of the technique of an indus- 
trial class. Mrs. Webb asserts that the real foe of the working 
woman is not the skilled male artisan, but the half-hearted female 
amateur who "blacklegs both the workshop and the bome."*^ 
Examples are not lacking to prove that in districts where female 
and child-labor abounds the wages of men are lower than in 
similar trades elsewhere. Additional labor, with the consequent 
derangement of the home, thus brings, under these conditions, 
no amelioration of the standard of living, since the combined 
family income will little surpass that which the man alone must 
receive were he the sole bread-winner. Alleviation of this situa- 
tion does not necessarily demand the abstention of women from 
industry, but it calls for such organization and intelligent appli- 
cation as shall enforce a wage that will really augment the family 
income. 

So real and so patent have been the evils incident to the em- 
ployment of those women who work because they must that 
attention has been deflected from the unwholesome idleness of 
those who are not compelled to seek occupation. The patho- 
logical aspects of idleness are perhaps less dramatic because more 
recondite. In his Subjection of Women Mill deplores the dull 
and hopeless life of women devoid of occupational interest. The 
void created by shifting the incidence of industry from home to 
workshop has, for certain classes of women, not been filled by 
any compensating life-interest. Under e^^isting conditions ma- 

^'^ Problems of Modem Industry, 107. Mrs. Willett has demonstrated 
that in those branches of the clothing industry where women workers are 
organized their wages approach those of men (Women in the Clothing Trade, 
chap. iv). 



132 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

temity does not in itself constitute a vocation for all womankind 
When mere number of population has ceased to be the final 
desideratum, when the family name and the perpetuation of par- 
ticular stocks is no longer a fetish, the mere bearing and rearing 
of oflfspring need not monopolize the energy of one-half the 
human race. No other achievement of civilization can compare 
with that which substitutes an economical method of reproduc- 
tion for the wasteful process of savagery. The prolongation of 
infancy and the elaboration of child-care that accompany advanc- 
ing culture may reabsorb part of the energy thus released, but 
not all. 

The problem of a supplementary occupational interest arising 
from this release, like that arising from the revolution in the 
industrial order, has called forth three types of solution and 
experiment. One wholly absolves women from the narrow 
slavery of sex and opens to her all the social activities of the 
male, full share. Another recognizes her emancipation from the 
oriental thralldom to reproductive functions, but seeks to so 
exalt the maternal and domestic functions as to make of them a 
social service worthy to be accepted, even under the new condi- 
tions of child-rearing, as woman's sufficient contribution to the 
state. A third accepts motherhood as a necessary service which, 
however, is to be supplemented by participation in specific pro- 
duction outside the home. 

One of the tragedies of contemporary society is the woman 
who, through lack of an adequate occupational interest, is chron- 
ically sickly and inefficient. Her unused abilities ferment and 
decay. A source of personal discomfort to herself, this lack of 
self-realization is a loss to society by just so much as her latent 
talents fail of profitable employment or are turned to unwhole- 
some ends. A prominent physician of Boston recently voiced 
the verdict of the medical profession when he declared that one- 
half of all the nervous people (chiefly women) who come to 
him are suffering for want of an outlet. "They have," he con- 
tinues, "been going at half-pressure, on half steam, with a fund 
of energy lying dormant."^* Much of the marital unrest of the 

"Dr. Richard C Cabot, (juoted in the American MagoMtne, December, 1908, 
204. 



ACCESS OF WOMEN TO INDUSTRIAL OCCUPATIONS 133 

period is traceable to this absence of serious occupational interest 
among married women of the prosperous classes. Social dis- 
quietude, tmwholesome forms of recreation, nervous break-down 
that results from overexertion in specious and profitless forms of 
activity, are the natural corollaries of an unrealized instinct of 
woiiananship. Moreover, the deadening of latent powers in 
the unmarried through the absence of that individualization 
which can be realized only in the discipline of occupation is 
to be reckoned among the causes of the unfitness for service 
which characterizes so large a portion of young women. 

Western civilization has imperfectly outgrown the ideal of 
the seclusion of women inherited from the older Orient. Miss- 
ing the stimulus of a free career open to her talents, woman 
enters in only a half-hearted >.ay into such trades and professions 
as will tolerate her presence. Yet there are certain branches of 
activity which are peculiarly adapted to women, and into which 
they have already entered in numbers.*^ When the process of 
industrial readjustment shall have more clearly shaped itself, it 
is likely that some occupations will again be definitely set aside 
for women and conditions therein adjusted to their peculiar 
needs. Without predicating the tdtimate regimentation of in- 
dustrial society, it is possible to conceive of a socially regulated 
division of labor which, while allowing a specialization of 
domestic service chiefly in the hands of women, shall also provide 
for outside occupations suitable to their capacities. This would 
employ in the home the whole time of some women and part of 
the time of others. It would remove from the home into special- 
ized work-places much of the labor that is still retained in the 
household. Child-bearing would be accredited as a part of 
woman's work for society, demanding the fullest exemptions and 
saf^^ards. These might in some cases justify pensions for 
motherhood. They might require that society go farther than 
Jevons insisted thirty years ago, when he advocated "the ulti- 

"Mrs. Willett has noted the trend toward a division of labor along sex 
lines in certain branches of the clothing industry in New York City (Womgn m 
the Clothing Trade, chap. iii). Women were found to preponderate in fifteen 
occupations in Massachusetts in 1885 (Report of the Statistics of Labor, 1889, 
557). 



134 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

mate complete exclusion of mothers of children under three years 
of age from factories and workshops.^ ^ 

Vital as is the consideration that workers should, as Mill puts 
it, "relish their habitual pursuits," freedom of choice of occupa- 
tion is of no less moment in maximizing social production. Both 
the ideas and the conditions that have been and are still dominant 
limit woman to a narrow range outside of domestic interests. In 
case she aspire to make a career for herself, she has to face social 
disapprobation on the one side and the surrender of whatever 
maternal instinct she may possess on the other. Child-bearing 
is not, under prevailing conditions, easily compatible with a 
"career," and yet it is both possible and desirable that a woman 
should, if she so desire, combine the two. The emancipation of 
woman, so far as it is related to the economic situation, does not 
necessarily involve the whole problem of women's rights as such. 
It need only recognize the right of the woman, whether wife or 
daughter, to make her contribution to the family resources in 
whatever manner may best suit her tastes and aptitudes. It 
necessitates only such a remodeling of the family economy as 
shall substitute co-operation for dependence. Whether she use 
a chum at home or work in a dairy for wages, whether she do 
the family washing or find employment in a laundry, her partici- 
pation in production is equally valid and her contribution to the 
social wealth equally real. 

But, granting that such larger liberty of choice is desirable, 
there remains the ultimate fact that the preponderant mass of 
women will continue domestic in taste, and for them the home 
will still be the center of activity. The "three generations of 
unmarried women" which an English reformer demands in order 
to produce a class who shall be emancipated from antiquated 
traditions of the family and who shall develop an industrial 
solidarity will, for obvious reasons, hardly appear. It is the 
woman of domestic tastes who marries and endlessly transmits 
her characteristics. The sexless woman, the woman whose dis- 
tinctive trait is an egoistic ambition for self-determination as 
an independent unit rather than in the family group, may appear 

"Jevons, Methods of Social Reform, 



ACCESS OF WOMEN TO INDUSTRIAL OCCUPATIONS 135 

more and more numerously in each generation but her class is 
not likely to become predominant. Her type is increasingly 
recruited through imitation as her position becomes more toler- 
able, but her characteristic trait is an acquired one, and in this 
department of society, at least, imitation must in the long run 
prove less potent than heredity. 

That the reactions of woman's increased participation in 
industry have been so largely pathological is in some measure 
due to the one-sided emphasis which modem life places on mere 
crude production. Whatever changes in the structure of the 
family have accompanied the attempt to adjust domestic condi- 
tions to the new industrial order have been associated with pro- 
ductive activities, but this social readjustment has not, in Anglo- 
Saxon lands, kept pace with the economic transformation. Now 
the family is conservative because it is the natural unit not of pro- 
duction but of consumption, and consumption is not easily revolu- 
tionized For the purpose of using its resources society is less 
effectively organized than for creating them, since it does not 
recognize the management of consumption as a validly accredited 
career. During the period when all energies were being monopo- 
lized in the production of larger supplies and of new varieties 
of goods by processes so exacting as to call into service all avail- 
able forces, there has been no commensurate effort to perfect 
the faculty of turning such goods to the most useful ends. 

Woman, then, more conservative than man is through her 
position as mother and home-maker, most intimately connected 
with the functions of consumption, a phase of economic activity 
inherently more conservative than production. There is as much 
call for elaboration in this field as there was two centuries ago 
in the machinery of production. It goes without saying that the 
family standard of living and the total of social wealth are as 
much open to improvement, on the material side, by thrifty appli- 
cation of resources as by augmentation of income. Although 
imperfectly appreciated and inadequately developed, the social 
values that lie in estheticized consumption are the flower of 
modem culture. The typical modem, and particularly the 
American, gulps his pleasures as he gulps his food. Even where 



136 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

a certain d^^ee of prosperous leisure exists, either conspicuous 
waste or unintelligent use neutralizes most of its cultural advan- 
tages. Society can afford to set its sanction on the guidance of 
taste in the thrifty use of goods as an economic career. 



DISCUSSION 

THE SELF-SUPPORTING WOMAN AND THE FAMILY 

Lydia Kingsmill Commander, New York City, N. Y. 

The self-supporting woman is today the woman who is best serving the 
larger interests of her family, because she is fulfilling her historic mission, 
in the spirit of her age. 

Women have always worked, and always will work. They cannot do 
otherwise. Woman is the working human creature. To work is an inherent 
tendency of woman's nature; with man it is an acquired characteristic 
Woman works from instinct; man from habit 

Among primitive peoples the pursuits of the sexes, their interests, and 
their views of the purposes of life, are sharply differentiated. Speaking 
generally, the man follows war, the woman work. The man is ruled by 
his passions. He desires freedom, food, and sexual satisfaction; hence he 
seeks to conquer his enemies, to slay the beasts, and to subdue woman. The 
mdghty hunter, the triumphant hunter, the husband of many subservient 
wives — such are the heroes of the tribe. 

To the primitive woman the family is the supreme consideration. Her 
life is given to bearing children, and to laboring for their nurture. To 
this end she originated and followed various industries. She makes pottery, 
weaves, sews, gathers berries, roots, and grain, and ultimately tames the 
milder animals to her use. So closely is she identified with all forms of 
labor that to work is a distinctive mark of femininity. No primitive man 
who works, no matter what his excuse, commands respect Because he 
works he is despised — he is a "squaw-man." 

To persuade the primitive, free-roaming, fighting male to turn from war to 
work was a tremendous task, slowly accomplished through the long centuries. 
He was first induced to labor by his interest in the female. To win her favor 
he helped her in her chosen work of providing for her family. Soon he 
became interested in the children who consumed the fruits of his toil. 
Finally he began to enjoy the home comfort which resulted from their 
joint labors. Thus the woman, by attaching the man to the family group, 
doubled her working capacity, and gave to her children a new parent In 
short, she made two parents grow where one grew before. 

Inevitably, the families nurtured by both parents survived in greater 
strength and numbers than those left to the care of the mother alone. So 



ACCESS OF WOMEN TO INDUSTRIAL OCCUPATIONS 137 

were perpetuated and increased in man the feminine trait, industry, and 
the feminine interest, the love of the family. 

Thus, because it was better for the family, the woman's ideal has pre- 
vailed over the man's. He has accepted her view-point. He could never make 
her fight; but she has made him work. This was her larger service to the 
family. 

In his new capacity, as producer instead of a destroyer, man accepted 
first those out-of-door tasks, most akin to his natural pursuits. He cared 
for the flocks and herds, and in time adopted the various branches of 
agriculture. Much later he began to prepare raw materials for use, per- 
forming such ultra-feminine tasks as grinding com, dyeing yam, and 
weaving cloth. 

Among civilized nations only traces of the original man now remain. 
We have left the hunter and trapper, who vanishes before the on-coming 
settler; and the professional soldier, for the tramp of whose departing 
feet many already eagerly listen. All other men are workers — ^they are 
"squaw-men." They have come to the woman's view-point— they believe, 
and live their belief that life is for labor. This change of heart has been 
complete and genuine. The modem man of toil accepts his new vocation, 
not protestingly, but with the enthusiasm of a recent convert Not content 
mth sharing woman's tasks, he has actually re-christened her ancient indus- 
tries "man's work," and seeks to hold them as a sex monopoly. 

But, though woman has taught men what to do, she has not yet shown 
him how to do it True to his earlier instincts, man has transformed 
industry into war. He has taken the work out of the home> and built great 
factories and workshops; but he attacks cotton, wool, and flax as he 
formerly attacked his enemies. He lines up an army and hurls it at the 
labor, without the least regard how his soldiers emerge from the fray. 
They come from the battle-field maimed and crushed and bleeding: the 
dead and dying strew the field. But the fight goes on. The leader is a 
"captain of industry," dominated by the lust of conmiercial conquest To 
build higher, to produce more, to travel faster, to become richer than his 
competitors — ^these are his master-motives. 

Man works as he fights — to win, to overcome his adversaries; and he 
cares more for the victory than he does for the safety and happiness of 
his industrial army. He has made the business battlefields as bloody as 
were ever the fields of war. There are in a single year, in the United 
States alone, 94,000 people killed and injured on the railways; and 232,000 
more in the factories. In the last four years we have killed more people in 
industry — 80,000 more — ^than all the soldiers slain in the Civil War, the 
Gray and the Blue combined. 

With amazing energy man has developed industry far beyond the point 
where woman had brought it He has done what woman possibly never 
could have done — invented vast power machinery and organized an immense 



138 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

and intricate system of production and distribution. But in his haste and 
excitement he has lost the vital part of the woman's point of view. He 
has forgotten what industry is for. He has been so intent upon his divi- 
dends or his pay-envelope that he has sacrificed himself and his family — 
he is sacrificing the whole nation— to carry on this industrial warfare. He 
is capping the energies of the race, and by overstrain unfitting men and 
women for the best parenthood. 

All manner of social ills spring from this masculine mistake of trans- 
forming industry into war. Many of these evils are attributed to the 
presence of women on the business battle-field. We are told, and truly, 
that the arduous labors of shop, mill, and factory drain the vital forces of 
women and unfit them for good maternity. But it is equally true that the 
over-taxed, under-nourished working-man, of whom we have millions, is 
incat>able of transmitting to offspring the sound, strong body and abound- 
ing health which is the birthright of every child. 

Because women suffer so cruelly in this industrial warfare they are 
frequently told that they should return to their homes. This is an utterly 
impossible proposition, and one which suggests the reversal of the whole 
process of social evolution. Women are not going out of industry; they 
are being irresistibly drawn and driven into it, by tremendous social forces. 
This tendency is indicated in the followng ways: 

1. Self-supporting women are constantly increasing in numbers. 

2. Their period of work, before marriage, is lengthening. 

3. More of them remain at work after marriage; or, after a period of 
domestic life, return to work. 

4. Their remuneration is increasing and they are securing more of the 
higher positions — those requiring long training and large compensation. 

5. More women follow life-professions, even at the sacrifice of mar- 
riage, when necessary. 

6. There are more skilled workers among women. Girls eagerly attend 
school or classes offering them industrial training. 

7. Women workers are organizing, taking themselves seriously as a 
permanent part of the industrial world, and endeavoring to improve their 
conditions. 

8. Society is, more and more, accepting the self-supporting woman as 
a permanent factor in industry, an essential part of the industrial organism. 
It is discussing her problems and making efforts to adapt conditions to her 
needs. 

Meanwhile, the home activities are being continually narrowed, while 
the woman is being developed and enlarged. The housewife of the past, 
who had a meager knowledge of the three R's and whose outside inter- 
ests were limited to her own town or village, found ample scope in the 
varied activities of the old workshop-home. But the educated woman of 
today, who is kept in daily touch with the whole world, finds too slender an 



ACCESS OF WOMEN TO INDUSTRIAL OCCUPATIONS 139 

outlet for her energies in the attenuated activities of modem housekeeping. 
Her mind registers a world-stimulus that demands more than a five-room 
flat for expression. Hence, the single woman, the childless wife, the 
widow, the divorced woman, the wife of the invalid or the unfortunate, and 
even the mother whose children no longer require her constant care, 
increasingly swell the ranks of the self-supporting women. Usually, it is 
only under the strongest pressure of necessity that the mothers of young 
children perform labor that takes them from the home, but even they are 
frequently met in the industfial world. 

These women have become wage-workers, not only to earn a living, 
but to raise the standard of comfort in their families. The latest figures 
show that nearly 10 per cent, of women workers are the sole support of a 
family, while 30 per cent more assist a parent or other relative to main- 
tain a home. Even those who support only themselves, by relieving the 
family income of the burden of their maintenance, raise the standard of 
living for the rest. 

Sometimes, it is true, the first effect of women working is to lower 
the wages of men, so that the family income is not increased. But this 
condition is not a necessary accompaniment of woman's labor. It can be 
overcome by intelligence and organization. The ''iron law of wages" is an 
exploded theory in a country where New York bricklayers get seventy 
cents an hour and the cigar-pickers of Tampa, Fla., make $40 a week. These 
are but two of many trades in which the workers have, by intelligent organ- 
ization, raised themselves financially, not only above "the level of subsis- 
tence," but beyond a mere "living wage," and into the comfortable middle 
class. Poorly organized workers, whether men or women, will always have 
low wages,. 

On the whole the woman worker does raise the standard of living, for 
herself and her family. We are often told, contemptuously, that she works 
for "finery." But what does that mean? It means that she is working to 
bring herself to the American level, in a country whose women are 
famous, the world over, for their good clothes. If the working-woman is 
wrong in this, then the whole United States is wrong. She is simply 
trying to attain the standards of her age and race. 

Nor does she, commonly, desert her family and climb alone. She tries 
to bring them up with her. Of working-women 80 per cent live at home; 
and they buy rugs and curtains and pianos, as well as feathers and brace- 
lets and furs. Pathetic, even though often amusing, are the efforts of the 
young woman, who, through contact with the world has gained some new 
knowledge or culture, to impart it to her less enlightened parents. For 
instance, a New York tenement-reared girl, whose mother took in washing 
to make her a school teacher, is now carefully training the mother to read 
the Outlook instead of the Sunday papers. 

Another teacher is the eldest of the six children of a common laborer, 



I40 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

who drinks heavily. From the day that she began to teach she has been the 
self-appointed guardian or foster-mother of her five brothers and sisters. 
Through her efforts and her earnings they have all been educated. The 
three girls are now teachers, one brother is a physician and the other a 
civil engineer. 

She has never married. In the census she is simply written down as a 
self-supporting, single woman, aged forty-two— one more to be mourned 
over, or condemned as unfaithful to her woman's duty of raising a family. 
But has she not, in the highest sense of the term, raised a family, by 
lifting into the ranks of the intelligent and educated, five sisters and broth- 
ers who might otherwise have remained permanently upon the life level of 
their drunken laborer father? 

The self-supporting woman, however, usually marries. And in part 
her desire to dress well and to rise socially is due to her ambition to 
marry well, and thus insure to herself and her children a higher level of 
existence. The well-dressed girl, with refined friends, can meet and marry 
a higher type of man than the shabby girl, of unrefined associations. And 
how can a woman better serve her prospective family, than by marrying 
a man who will help her up, instead of one who will drag her down? 

Thus, in various ways, the self-supporting woman is a direct factor 
in raising the economic and the social status of her family. That she 
gives this service at too great a health-cost to herself, is her misfortune 
and the misfortune of the race. It is not her fault; it is the result of 
the present organization of industry, which measures prosperity by profits, 
regardless of the welfare of the workers. 

Women have been forced to work, by necessity and by their instinct of 
industry; but they are laboring under conditions which they have not 
created, and which they do not approve. They are doing their work in 
man's way, in the midst of the strenuous conflict which is his idea of 
business. Women suffer, not because they work, but because they work 
as men work, under conditions that men have created for themselves. 

Where men live, act, or work together, and without women, they are 
always harsh, often brutal, and sometimes actually savage. The immi- 
grant men who come here live like barbarians, so long as their wives are 
not with them. But once the women come the whole race moves upward, 
seeking constantly higher levels. 

Let a group of American men, who have been well-behaved members of 
some quiet, law-abiding eastern community, go to a western frontier town; 
presently most of them will be carrying knives and revolvers, while half a 
dozen will have turned into fighting desperados. 

So man-managed industry, though it is an improvement on warfare, is 
still destructive of life. Man the soldier destroys life and property. Man 
the worker produces property and therefrom preserves it: but he still holds 
life lightly, as a cheap and plentiful thing. Man, left to the guidance of 



ACCESS OF WOMEN TO INDUSTRIAL OCCUPATIONS 141 

his own instincts, will always be lavish of human life; for it does not cost 
him anything. 

So long as industry remains warfare, it is not true industry. It is a sort 
of hybrid activity, a cross between war and labor, a semi-savage game, 
unworthy of a developed, humane people. It is as illogical and absurd as 
"civilized warfare;" and its chief value lies in the fact that it is leading 
up to something better. 

Industry must be civilized — ^in the interests of woman and of the 
family. And only the presence of women in industry can civilize it. So 
long as the woman could live, work, and rear her children in the home, it 
was perhaps sufficient for her to civilize and humanize the home. But 
that is not enough today. She must live, work, and rear her children in 
the outside world as well as in the home. Therefore we must have a civi- 
lization that will reach from the heart of the home to the nation's outmost 
rim. 

Men and women are working together, and more and more they will 
work together. But the conditions under which they work cannot continue 
to be determined by man's endurance; they will have to be altered to meet 
woman's need. She, not he, is the sex supremely important to the welfare 
of the race. "If she be small, weak-natured, miserable, how shall men 
grow." Wherever men and women live and act together, the conditions of 
life must be brought to her level, or the race will suffer ; and industry must 
obey this law. 

Already our six million working-women have had a humanizing effect 
upon many of the trades and professions. A direct result of the employ- 
ment of women has been the whole movement for welfare work — ^the 
comfortable rest and lunch rooms, the girls' clubs, the summer vacation 
homes, the welfare secretary, and the numberless other comforts and helps 
provided by so many up-to-date factories, shops, and stores. The princi- 
pal purpose of the Consumers' League is to improve the labor conditions of 
women — ^the same motive that animates the workers themselves in their 
trade organizations and in the Woman's Trade Union League. As working- 
women increase in skill and numbers, and therefore in influence, they will 
do still more to modify conditions, and to make the factory like the old- 
time home — a place of safe, cheerful, and companionable labor. 

The great, present-day task of woman is thus to remake the industrial 
world, to change the basis of industry from war to co-operation, to put 
people before property, and life before labor. She must teach man that 
industry is but a means to an end; and that healthy, happy, noble-minded 
men and women are of more importance than sky-scrapers, factories, and 
steel rails. In this work, the self-supporting woman of today is the 
advance guard. She is working not for herself only and for her immedi- 
ate relatives, but for the nation. She is giving a grtat social service to the 
race. And thus she is fulfilling, in a new, large sense, the historic mission 
of her sex — the nurturing and uplifting of the family. 



142 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN AND THE FAMILY 
Mrs. Elsie Clews Parsons, New York Cmr, N. Y. 

Whatever the virtues of the proprietary family, it does not encourage 
initiative, least of all feminine initiative. For its own safe-guarding, 
Manu's dictum is wholly to the point. "By a girl, by a young woman, or 
even by an aged one, nothing must be done independently, even in her own 
house" ^ In the mediaeval proprietary family just as in the Hindu there 
was no place for the innovating woman. In mediaeval and even later days 
she could be herself only on a throne or in a nunnery or brothel Eliza- 
beth of England, Elizabeth or Katherine of Russia, and many a less famous 
princess ignored the institutional family. Like the royal ladies of the 
African west coast, they made over domestic law in their own favor — sub- 
stituting polyandry for the prevailing Christian type of polygyny. Other 
noble ladies in whose souls stirred the power of leadership but for whom 
no throne, or at least no undivided throne was available, betook themselves 
to the cloister. Radegund, of France, for example, who was modern enough 
to keep her royal husband waiting at meals for her, so absorbed was she 
in "charity" — and I have no doubt that some cross sixth-century paraphrase 
of "charity begins at home" was thrown at her— Radegund bullied a bishop 
into consecrating her a deaconess and then founded a nunnery at Poitiers. 
Here she undoubtedly found it far more agreeable to hob-nob with the 
notables of her day, one of whom, the poet Fortunatus, called her "the 
light of his eyes," than to have staid at home subject to the marital temper 
and occupying the somewhat irksome status of fifth among King Qoth- 
acar's seven wives. Conspicuous among other family iconoclasts were 
Agnes, of Bohemia, who, as soon as her father died, broke her engagement 
to Fredrich II to found, with papal sanction, a nunnery and hospital at 
Prague; and Hedwig, of Silesia, another famous founder of hospitals, who 
after having presented Duke Heinrich with a proper number of progeny, 
made herself liable to a suit for the restitution of conjugal rights. For any 
ambitious woman of humble birth who wanted to see the world, to corre- 
spond with scholars, to become an artist in caligrraphy, embroidery, and 
miniature painting, to compile history and legendry, to write Latin dramas 
or materia medicas, the cloister was the only open door. If she were too 
utterly wayward to brook cloistral, as well as familial, discipline, she 
became an attache of another institution, whose ways many a nunnery 
copied and whose inmates were licensed to take part in public processions, 
to entertain visiting notables and to contribute to the treasury of state and 
church. 

All these queens, nuns, and femmes de joie were the celibate or grass- 
widow pioneers of woman's rights, the ancestresses of the modem emanci- 

»V, 147. 



ACCESS OF WOMEN TO INDUSTRIAL OCCUPATIONS 143 

gated woman. Nor did this genealogy escape popular notice. It is little 
wonder then that college education for women, one of the first steps of 
the woman's movement of the nineteenth century, was at first denounced as 
incompatible with family life. 

Besides, it was. The first cc^ege women, like their mediaeval fore- 
bears, turned their backs on the family, but they were not so much traitors 
as outcasts. The proprietary family, or what was left of it, had stigma- 
tized them as evitable spinsters, but whether, as one controversialist put 
it, it was the woman who would not marry who went to college rather 
than the woman who went to college who would not marry,* or whether 
the social ostracism or at least suspicion which the pioneer college woman 
was under itself disqualified her for marriage, must always be an open 
question. Where she was no longer on the defensive her matrimonial 
eligibility certainly increased. For example in a study of the marriage- 
rate of 1078 members of the A. C. A. in 1890 it was shown that of gradu- 
ates over forty years old 83.3 per cent, of the graduates of western and 
coeducational colleges were married as against 41.7 per cent of the gradu- 
ates of eastern and separate colleges.* This difference was, of course, due 
in part to the numerical inferiority and consequent superiority in the 
strategies of courtship of women at large in the west, but we may also 
surmise that it was also due to the fact that coeducational colleges are 
twenty years older than separate colleges and that they accustom the 
potential husband to the college girl and perhaps vice versa. We may 
assume that this mutual toleration raises the marriage-rate 6.1 per cent 
for the coeducated college girl above the separately educated from a com- 
parison made in 1895 between the marriage-rates of both types of eastern 
college graduates — ^the influence of locality being removed.* 

In all discussion of the unseemly marriage- rates of college women we 
must also remember that until quite recently it has been difHcult to speak 
with much conclusiveness on the statistics of college women. Their record 
was too short-lived. For example, out of 705 members of the A. C. A. in 
1885, 196 were married and 509 unmarried, giving a marriage-rate of 
27.8 per cent., but then only forty-six were over forty years old.* Of the 
1805 members of the A. C. A. in 1895, 28.2 per cent were married, but of 
the niembers who were past forty, 54.5 per cent, were married.* This 

* Nation, I, 330. 

*The Overland Monthly, XV (1890), 444* 

*Shinn, "The Marriage-Rate of College Women" in Century MagoMtne, 
XXVIII (189s), New Sen, 947- 

* Howes, Health Statistics of Women College Graduates, Boston, 1 88s, pp. 
as, 28. We must remember in using these figures that a greater proportion of 
married than of unmarried members of the A. C. A. withdraw from it 

*Shinn, op, cit,, 946. 



144 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

higher rate is exceeded or approximately by still more recent figures. In 
1903 the marriage-rate of graduates of the first ten years of Vassar 
1866-76) was 5541 per cent.; of Smith (1878-88), 42.70 per cent.; of 
Wellesley (1878-88), 46.55 per cent^ 

With every allowance, however, the original college girl does not seem 
to have married at the same rate as her non-college-bred contemporaries — 
assuming that the superfluous or unmarried woman at large is to be calcu- 
lated at 20 per cent 

During the last few decades several changes have come over the family 
which render it much more grr^icious to the higher education of women. 
The age of marriage is considerably later than it was. Our grandmothers 
married in their teens, our mothers in their early twenties, and we between 
twenty-four and twenty-six.* As the average of graduation from college is 
twenty-two, or even lower,* we did not have to choose between marriage 
and college from the point of view at least of life's time schedule. 

Then in endless ways girls at large are far freer than they were. Not 
many mothers could any longer be found who, like Hilar/s, would consider 
a daughter's proposal to work for a man indecent or caution her to always 
carry a parcel and an umbrella as a safeguard. The object of the nine- 
teenth century's bloodless revolt of the daughters was the assimilation of 
their lives with those of their brothers, and a college education was naturally 
down on their programme. 

Now the point of view toward the college education of boys has itself 
undergone a change which has reacted upon popular ideas on the education 
of girls. As late as the middle of the nineteenth century the college was 
conceived of as primarily a training place for service in church and state. 
Two-thirds of its graduates were priests or lawyers." When the church- 
man began to yield to the business man, and the college became merely a 
continuation school for the undifferentiated boy, a college education became 
much more conceivable for the undifferentiated girl. 

How closely the college girl has come to approximate in recent years 
to the type of her home-staying contemporary is seen in the careful study 
made by Professor Mary Roberts Smith in 1900 of 343 college-bred married 
women and of their 313 non-college-bred married sisters, cousins, and 

*Hall & Smith, "Marriage and Fecundity of College Men and Women," in 
Pedagogical Seminary, X (1903), 301-5. 

'In England in 1891 the average age of marrying spinsters was 34.8. In 
Massachusetts for the twenty-year period, 1S7S-9S, the average age was 35.4 
(Smith, 8). 

•Howes, op, cit,, 16; Shinn, op, cit,, 246; over 22 for Vassar, Abbott^ 
"A Generation of College Women" in Forum XX (1895-9^), 378, 379. 

"Ko/e Review, VII (i89a-99)» 34I-4S. 



ACCESS OF WOMEN TO INDUSTRIAL OCCUPATIONS 145 

friends. The average age at marriage for the college woman was 26.3, for 
her kinswomen and friends 24.3 " 

The most interesting point in this study is, I think, the comparison of 
the reproductive capacity of the two classes of women. The college woman 
had borne 1.65 children,** the non-college woman 1.875. The non-college 
woman had borne therefore an absolutely larger number of children than 
the college woman, but in proportion to the number of years of married 
life the college woman had borne 9 per cent, more children than the non- 
college women." 

And so we see that originally an exile, the college girl has been taken 
back into the bosom of a penitent family. In earlier days she may have 
been one of the many factors in the degeneration of the proprietary family. 
Has she any influence on its present day relics? She marries, bears chil- 
dren or is unable or refuses to bear them much like the non-college-bred 
woman. Some slight diflferences between her and the latter there may be. 
She marries a year or so later. Her marriage-rate is still no doubt com- 
paratively low. She seems to add to the demand for college-bred and 
profession-following husbands.*' Divorce statistics might show that she 
is a comparatively successful wife. Her children may be even a little 
sturdier or better cared for than those of non-college-bred mothers." 

But in all these ways is the college woman anything but a particularly 
emphatic expression of a changing family type? That she is actively acceler- 
ating the change in the only way that is at present open I fail to see. Her 
economic status is just the same as that of the non-collegiate wife. Her 
daily round of occupations is very much like that of every other housewife. 

'^Even this high average is somewhat misleading. It is brought down by 
a certain number of very early marriages among the non-college women. 

"For early college classes this rate is, of course, higher. In 1903 the rate 
per married graduate of the first ten classes of Vassar (1866-76) was 3.03; of 
Smith (1878-88) 1.99; of Wellesley (1878-^8) 1.81 (Hall & Smith, op. cit., 
30X-S). In 1902 the birth-rate per married graduate of the six Harvard 
classes from 1872 to 1877 was z.99 children {Harvard Graduates MagoMine, XI 
(1903-3), 356). 

"Statistics of College and Non-College Women" in Publications of the 
American Statistical Association, VII (1900-1), 34. 

"In Professor Smith's study it appeared that three-fourths of the college 
women married college men, while only one-half of the non-college women 
married college men. Of the husbands of the college women 65 per cent, were 
professional men, as against 37 per cent, of those of the non-college women 
(18). 

"Of the children of Professor Smith's college-bred mothers 96.3 per cent, 
had satisfactory health as against 95.4 per cent, of those of the non-college-bred 
mothers (is). 



146 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

Her household may be run a little more systematically, but it is run in the 
traditional way. She too is the vicarious consumer of her husband's wealth, 
in Professor Verblen's lively terms, the foremost illustration of his power 
for conspicuous waste. 

We have, of course, been considering only the undifferentiated college- 
bred woman, the woman who may work, who in large numbers does work, 
a few years after graduation and before marriage, but who at marriage 
becomes the conventional housewife, who leaves blank space in question^ 
naires calling for her occupation. What of the relation of the college- 
trained professional woman to the family? In some ways she is in much 
the same position that the mere college girl once held. She is a family 
outcast. Her added period of professional training makes a later marriage 
more likely, although not more necessary. She can get her three or four 
years' training and apprenticeship before marrying and yet marry at the 
alumna's average marrying age. If, however, she practices that "art of 
detachment" which Dr. Osier so relentlessly insists upon for success in 
his profession at least, she may not marry until two or three years later. 
Then I surmise that in nine cases out of ten she comes to a parting of 
the ways, matrimony on the one hand, her profession on the other. 
Prejudice against married women in schools, in colleges, in government 
service, in almost any kind of work in fact, her suitor's traditions, the 
exigencies of his own work, her own traditions or her moral or intellectual 
faithfulness, one or another insists on a sharp cut answer as to whether 
she will 

run with Artemis 
Or yield the breast to Aphrodite. 

Unfortunately we have no statistical information about her answer.** 
Nor have we of her answers to the even more interesting questions which 
confront her if she finds a way to combine matrimony and Work. What 
is the birth-rate in her family? What incompatibilities has she found 
between maternity and professional work? Have they been great enough 
to force her to undergo either? . 

Had time allowed I should have liked to have as my contribution to 
this discussion the outcome of the following three queries made with con- 
siderable detail of course to the professional and ex-professional married 
women of the country. Did you give up your profession at marriage — if 
so, why? During childbearing and rearing — if so, why? How are you 
solving the problem of combining marriage and maternity with your pro- 
fession ? 

^ Professor Thwing has pointed out that of 633 distinguished women 
figuring in Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, a publication dated 
1886-9, one-half are married (North American Review, CLXI (1895), 549f 5So) I 
but then we do not know how many of these women took to a career after 
marriage or merely as a substitute for marriage. 



ACCESS OF WOMEN TO INDUSTRIAL OCCUPATIONS 147 

My returns would have been an index to the rate of progress or, 
according to one's point of view, deterioration, in our contemporaneous 
family type. The emasculated form of the proprietary family which now 
prevails is in my opinion bound to persist until the economic status of 
the wife is altered, until she becomes independent through her own pro- 
ductive labor, whether or not her reproductive work is, as some would 
have it, state paid. Until she is economically independent she is bound to 
more or less approximate the harem t3rpe. Nor will she until then share 
equally with their father, either in law or custom, in the control of her 
children. Moreover, this economic independence must be won by the 
women of the higher cultural classes before the character of the family 
can be thereby affected. The hard-driven tenement house-wife who sup- 
ports her good-for-nothing or unemployed husband, the farmer's wife who 
works harder than even her hardworking husband, or the factory hand's 
wife who supplements his wages, are in spite of their labor thoroughly 
unemancipated women. Because in many ways a more primitive type of 
woman they are perhaps even more subject to marital mastery than their 
leisure-class sisters. As Gabriel Jarde has pointed out to us, it is only the 
people at the top of the scale who have enough social prestige to negotiate 
radical social changes. 

It is then on the fight of the professional woman to get back into the 
family that the future of the family will depend. But in the present 
temper of the community and under existing economic conditions it is 
likely to be a losing fight. Under our wasteful competitive system of pro- 
duction, the worker must adjust himself or herself to the standard eco- 
nomic day, or go to the walL A whole day's work or no work are the 
alternatives. People who are capable of a good half or even two-thirds 
of a da/s work are either worn out with over-exertion or forced into 
unmitigated unproductiveness — a sin against themselves, and an economic 
loss to society. Many men and almost all women suffer from this economic 
inelasticity. The working schedule of the potential or actual child-bearer 
must vary from time to time for the sake of both her productive and 
reproductive capacity. Women therefore should be peculiarly hospitable 
to any change in the productive system tending to eliminate competition 
either between men and women or between child-bearing and non-child- 
bearing women. 



Mrs. Isabel C. Bassows 

It was half past ten when Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows was called on for her 
word in the discussion. Owing to the lateness of the hour she took but 
seven minutes, in which brief time she rapidly considered the family itself, 
in order to see what would be the reaction upon it of outside industries, 
and of the higher education. The country family was a closer unit, she 



148 THE, AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

believed, than the city family. Any discordant element in it usually found 
a way to reach urban life. Those who were left worked as a whole for 
the betterment of the circumstances of the family, and though conditions 
were often hard yet a fine race of boys and girls was brought up under 
these influences, even when there was much outdoor work for all. Higher 
education coming into such a family was also to its advantage. 

The city family that had to find outside work for each member was more 
likely to be a house divided against itself. The effect on the younger mem- 
bers was to lessen their respect for their parents. The effect on the mother, 
to be looked on as an underpaid wage-earner, a drudge, was also bad, 
quite aside from the fact that she had to neglect her duties as the head of 
the house and the mother of the children. No work could be good for any 
mother in a home unless it increased the respect of husband and children 
for her. She was justified in letting someone else do her domestic work 
when she could earn large enough wages to have it better done than she 
could do it It may be true that there is a larger birth-rate among working- 
people who have not troubled themselves about higher, or indeed lower, 
education, but the birth-rate was of small consequence as compared with 
the drath-nt^ or the /i/r-rate. The number of children dying in such 
families is appalling. On the contrary though the college woman may have 
fewer children she takes wiser care of them and the number of deaths in pro- 
portion to the births, so far as figures have been ascertained, is highly in favor 
of the educated woman. It may also be true that she has wider interests, 
and perhaps employment, that take her much from home, but with her 
larger earnings she replaces herself in the home so that that does not 
suffer. 

In this country there is another home that one finds much less fre- 
quently in Europe, and that is a home made up of two women, usually 
professional women, but sometimes working-girls, who carry on all the 
functions of housdceeping, making charming centers for a wide and helpful 
influence in the community. They not infrequently adopt one or two chil- 
dren, so the mother-love in the heart has an opportunity for expansion 
and the child grows up in an atmosphere of industry, purity, and self-help, 
as well as with the spirit to help others. 

It may be true, and it is sad, that the number of childless homes is 
increasing in this country, but Mrs. Barrows did not believe it was true 
of the majority of American mothers that they were unwilling to bear the 
joys and sorrows of motherhood. Even if true among the rich and gay, 
it is not true in the great number of modest homes, where the daily bread 
is not a source of wearing anxiety. There is much more danger to fear, 
Judging from the painfully accurate paper of Dr. Morrow, that the fault 
lies not with the overwork nor the ovcreducatioo of women, but with the 
vices of men and the false standard of morals which requir es purity of 
life of women and not of men. 



ACCESS OF WOMEN TO INDUSTRIAL OCCUPATIONS 149 

Concluding Remasks op Pkofessor Wells 

However divergent our opinions appear to be I am sure that we all are 
united in a common aspiration for what is good and helpful to the world* 
in which we live. May I plead for seriousness in the discussions of these 
questions and emphasize the fact that certain biological conclusions are 
now well established and cannot safely be ignored in the life of any people? 



[We regret that the pa4>er on "The Statistics of Divorce," by Dr. Joseph 
A. Hill, of the Census Office, which here followed, was not received for 
publication.~£DiTOK.] 



IS THE FREER GRANTING OF DIVORCE AN EVIL? 



PROFESSOR GEORGE ELLIOTT HOWARD 
The University of Nebraska 



Increasingly for nearly four centuries the meaning of the 
freer granting of divorce has challenged the attention of thought- 
ful men. The moralist, the theologian, and the statesman have 
each shared generously in the discussion. Now the sociologist 
takes his turn. Emphatically this morning we have set ourselves 
a world-problem. It behooves us to use strategy in the attack. 
Possibly we may contribute most to the solution of the general 
problem by confining the discussion mainly to the part — by no 
means a small part — ^which the American people have in it. 

The movement of divorce in the United States during the 
twenty years, 1887-1906, is now fully disclosed in the gresit 
report of the Director of the Census. That report is surprisingly 
satisfactory to the scientific student, when he considers the shame- 
fully imperfect or totally lacking registration of vital statistics 
in most of the states and territories; and that the facts presented 
had to be gathered mainly from the manuscript decrees of sc«ne 
2,800 divorce courts : which decrees, of course, were not framed 
to suit the sociologist. These carefully planned tables and lumi- 
nous interpretations have provided the student of American 
society with a rich mine for exploitation during many years to 
come. 

The admirable summary just presented by Dr. Hill renders 
any formal analysis of the report in this paper unnecessary. 
From that summary it seems reasonably clear that in our country 
there is a "freer granting of divorce." We need not beg our 
premise. Divorce is about three times as frequent as it used to 
be. This is the salient fact. In Europe, too, while the number 
of divorces is relatively small, generally the rate is rising. 
Clearly we are face to face with a phenomenon, huge, portentous. 
What is its meaning? How should it be interpreted? Assuredly 

. 150 



IS FREER DIVORCE AN EVIL? 151 

it signifies somewhere the action of antisocial forces, vast and 
perilous. Doubtless here we have to do with an evil which seri- 
ously threatens the social order, which menaces human happiness; 
an evil to overcome which challenges our deepest thought, our 
ripest wisdom, our most persistent courage and endeavor. Is 
divorce the evil or the s)rmptom? the cause or the effect? the 
disease or the medicine? 

If we appeal to the decision of occidental thought since the 
Reformation, the answer is perfectly clear. From Luther and 
Bullinger to Milton and Beza, from Humboldt and Condorcet 
to the statesmen who have shaped the codes and molded the 
juridical theories of the twentieth century, always and everywhere 
the prevailing dictum is that divorce is prescribed as a remedy 
for a social malady. This is the justification of the divorce 
policy of the western world. Nay, this theory was acted upon 
with characteristic thoroughness by the Puritans of old New 
England. Logically, they instituted civil divorce as the counter- 
part of civil marriage. The documents of the colonial era, 
especially an exhaustive examination of the extant manuscript 
records of the ancient Massachusetts courts for nearly a century 
and a half, prove conclusively that in form and substance the 
American type of liberal divorce law and procedure was devel- 
oped in Puritan days, long betore the birth of our federal Union. 
Is this time-honored theory of divorce false? Is divorce, except 
perchance on the one "scriptural" ground, immoral, and there- 
fore the fountainhead of the malady which afflicts us? It may 
be so; for often the sanction of centuries of traditional belief 
has but perpetuated a dangerous error. That which is, of course, 
is not necessarily a proof of that which ought to be. 

Let us attack the problem by searching for the basic causes 
of the divorce movement 

I. IMPERFECT LEGISLATION AND FAULTY JUDICIAL PROCEDURE 

ARE NOT A PRINCIPAL CAUSE OF THE DIVORCE 

MOVEMENT 

I. A certain, though not a large, percentage of the divorces 
granted, it must be confessed, is due to bad law and to lax 



152 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

administration. In other words, if divorce be looked upon as 
a remedy, the disease which it seeks to cure may actually be 
spread through the mal-application of that remedy by our legis- 
latures and by our courts. At first glance, this assumption 
appears to be inconsistent with the facts. A careful examination 
of the entire legislation of the last two decades reveals a decided 
improven^nt in American divorce laws. Gradually more strin- 
gent provisions for notice to the defendant have been made, 
longer terms of previous residence for the plaintiff are required, 
more satisfactory conditions of remarriage after the decree are 
prescribed, while some of the worst "omnibus" clauses in the lists 
of statutory causes have been repealed. Nevertheless, during 
the period the divorce rate has gained a threefold velocity. This 
result tends to prove, if proof be needed, that the real grounds of 
divorce are far beyond the influence of the statute-maker, and 
to sustain the well-known dictum of Bertillon that laws extend- 
ing the number of accepted causes of divorce or relaxing the 
procedure in divorce suits have little influence "upon the increase 
in the number of decrees." It may indeed be impossible to 
measure exactly the effects of lax or stringent legislation. Still 
the reformer need not despair. Without the reforms accom- 
plished the rate might have been higher. From all the evidence 
available, it seems almost certain that there is a mai^n, very 
important though narrow, within which the statute-maker may 
exert a morally beneficent, even a restraining, influence. He may 
render the legal environment favorable to the operation of the 
true remedy. Emphatically there are good divorce laws as well 
as bad divorce laws. From its very nature a bad law may become 
a dead letter, thus tending to destroy the popular reverence for 
law itself. It may even encourage domestic discord by offering 
opportunity for evasion, collusion, or lax interpretation. On the 
other hand, good laws may check hasty impulse and force indi- 
viduals to take proper time for reflection. For this reason, the 
adoption of the decree nisi should be encouraged; while the 
sanction by the states of the remarkably sane recommendations 
of the Washington-Philadelphia divorce congress of 1906 would 
greatly contribute to the creation of the healthful legal environ- 



75* FREER DIVORCE AN EVIL? 153 

ment, just mentioned. Eventually, this might aid us in getting 
at the root of the matter: the fundamental causes of divorce 
which are planted deeply in the imperfections of the social system 
— ^notably in false sentiments regarding marriage and the family ; 
and which, as presently will appear, can only be removed through 
more rational principles and methods of education. 

2. Regarding the effects of law and procedure in several 
points the report of Director North is enlightening. It is signifi- 
cant that only 15.4 per cent, of the divorces granted in the twenty 
years (1887-1906) were contested; and "probably in many of 
these cases," we are told, "the contesting was hardly more than 
a formality, perhaps not extending beyond the filing of an answer, 
which often has the effect of expediting the process of obtaining 
the divorce." The percentage of contested cases is slowly rising; 
and, except where the cause is adultery, the wife more than the 
husband is likely to resist the granting of a decree. Divorces 
on the ground of cruelty are most frequently and those on the 
ground of desertion least frequently contested. When notice is 
personally served, 20.4 per cent, of the cases are contested ; while 
only 3.2 per cent, are resisted when notice is by publication. 
Usually the latter form of notice is "confined to those cases in 
which the residence and address of the libellee are either unknown 
or are outside the state in which the suit is brought," implying, 
"therefore, an existing separation either of considerable duration 
or of considerable distance or both." Now what is the meaning 
of these figures? Do they not in actual practice reveal an aston- 
ishing leaning toward a freer granting of divorce than that im- 
plied even in the enumerated statutory grounds, however ample 
the list may be? In effect though not in theory, do not these 
figures disclose a tendency toward dissolution of wedlock by 
mutual consent or even at the demand of either spouse? 

3. On the other hand, the tables here presented confirm the 
conclusion based on the statistics compiled by Colonel Wright 
twenty years ago, that interstate migration for divorce has not 
much contributed to raise the average rate. For a particular 
state or town the judicial traffic with a divorce colony may be a 
serious matter; but contrary 10 the popular notion, on the divorce 



IS4 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

movement as a whole the influence of clandestine divorce of this 
sort is almost n^ligible. Of the 820,264 divorces during the 
two decades granted to couples known to have been married in 
the United States, 21.5 per cent, were married outside the state 
in which the decree was rendered. But, of course, this does not 
mean that one couple out of five whose marriage was thus dis- 
solved migrated for the purpose of obtaining divorce. "On the 
contrary,'* says Dr. Hill in the Government Bulletin, "it is prob- 
able that that motive was present in a comparatively small pro- 
portion of the total number of cases, and that to a large extent 
the migration was merely an incident of the general movement 
of population, which takes place for economic and other reasons, 
unconnected with the question of divorce." In fact, according 
to the census of 1890, 21.5 per cent, and by that of 1900, 21 
per cent, of the native population were living outside the state 
or territory in which they were bom. Making all due allowance 
for this striking coincidence of proportions, and considering that 
the average duration of marriage before divorce is ten years, it 
seems clear :that Mr. Dike's judgment based on the statistics of 
the first report must still stand : "The establishment of uniform 
laws," he declared in 1889, "is not the central point" of the 
divorce problenx 

4. Some light is thrown by this investigation on another 
objection to the modem divorce policy. In effect does not the 
very existence of liberal divorce laws constitute an incentive to 
unstable or other bad marriages? Are not risky, temporary, or 
immoral unions consciously formed in full view of their easy 
dissolution? The statistics, though inconclusive, aflford little 
or no ground for an affirmative answer. The average duration 
of divorced marriages is ten years; while 60 per cent, of the 
total number of such marriages last less than ten years, and 
28.5 per cent, of them less than five years. During the first year 
of married life are granted 2. i per cent, of all divorces, or 18,876. 
The number rapidly increases until in the fifth year the maximum 
of 73,913 divorces or 8.2 per cent, is reached. "From this point 
on the number steadily diminishes year by year; but it does not 
fall below the number granted in the first year of married life 



IS FREER DIVORCE AN EVIL? 155 

until the eighteenth year is reached." There are nearly twice 
as many divorces in the twelfth year of the wedded life as in 
the first. Now, when we consider that probably there ore more 
people in the first than in the eighteenth year of married life, 
and that, as will soon appear, we have more cogent reasons to 
explain the laxity of the marriage bond during the early period, 
we are scarcely warranted in assuming that liberal divorce laws 
in themselves are perceptibly weakening the nuptial tie. 

5. On the other hand, if people do not get married in order 
to be divorced; do they get divorced in order again to be 
married? Popular opinion answers this question decidedly in 
the affirmative. Yet in this instance, too, the popular judgment 
is doubtless wrong. Although only foreign evidence is available 
to test the point, it is not probable that restrictions upon the re- 
marriage of divorced persons in any large measure influence 
the divorce rate. Prussian and Swiss statistics, now too old to 
be very satisfactory, show that divorced men re-wed during the 
first three years at about the same rate as do widowers; while 
divorced women remarry somewhat more rapidly than widows. 

II. THE MODERN DIVORCE MOVEMENT IS AN INCIDENT OF A 
TRANSITION PROCESS IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION; AND HENCE 
IT IS DUE PRIMARILY TO SOCIAL MIS-SELECTION AND THE 
CLASH OF IDEALS 

I. As a general result of the foregoing discussion it may 
perhaps be admitted that, however harmful are the effects of 
bad law and administration, we must dig deeper to reach the 
secret of our problem. Of a truth, to the serious student of social 
evolution the accelerated divorce movement appears clearly as an 
incident in the mighty process of spiritual liberation which is 
radically changing the relative positions of man and woman in 
the family and in society. Through a swift process of individu- 
alization for the sake of socialization the corporate unity of the 
patriarchal family has been broken up or even completely de- 
stroyed. More and more wife and child have been released from 
the sway of the house-father and placed directly under the larger 
social control. The new solidarity of the state is being won 



156 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

at the expense of the old solidarity of the family. The family 
bond is no longer coercion but persuasion. The tie which holds 
the members of the family together is ceasing to be juridical 
and becoming spiritual. More and more the family is dominated 
by the sociogenetic or cultural forces and less and less by the 
so-called "natural" or phylogenetic desires. Essentially the 
family-society is becoming a psychic fact. Beyond question the 
individualization for the sake of socialization is producing a 
loftier ideal of the marital union and a juster view of the relative 
functions of the sexes in the world's work. Immediately, from 
the very nature of the process it has inured most to the advantage 
of the woman. In the family, it is releasing her from manu viri 
and making her an even member of the connubial partnership; in 
the larger society, it is accomplishing her political, economic, and 
intellectual independence. In a word, it is producing a revolution 
which means nothing less than the socialization of one-half of 
human kind. 

Now, this process of individualization, of liberation, is not 
yet complete. Indeed, its swiftest progress, its most visible 
results, belong to the last fifty years. Emphatically we are at the 
height of the transition from the old regime to the new. There- 
fore, it is not strange that there should be frequent mis-selection, 
many maladjustments of newly sanctioned social relations. The 
old forces of social control have been weakened faster than the 
new forces have been developed. The old legal patriarchal bonds 
have not yet been adequately replaced by spiritual ties. There 
is frequent and disastrous clash of ideals. The new and loftier 
conception of equal rights and duties has rendered the husband 
and wife, and naturally the wife more often than the husband, 
sensitive to encroachment, and therefore the reaction is frequent 
and sometimes violent. In the present experimental stage, the 
finer and more delicately adjusted social mechanism is easily 
put out of order. The evil lurks, not in the ideals, but in the 
mistakes of the social builder. 

2. In the light of these facts, let us now examine the problem 
of divorce. 

First of all, it is significant that liberty of divorce has a 



/5" FREER DIVORCE AN EVIL? 157 

peculiar interest for woman. The wife more frequently than 
the husband is seeking in divorce an escape from marital ills. 
During the two decades (1887-1906) in the whole country over 
66 per cent, of all decrees were granted on the wife's petition. 
Among the principal causes only for adultery was the number 
granted to the husband (59.1 per cent.) greater than the number 
granted to the wife; and in this case, were social justice attained, 
who can doubt that the ratio would be reversed? In large 
measure, directly or indirectly, this anomaly is due to the vicious 
dual standard of morality by which society still measures the 
sexual sins of man and woman, to the woman's disadvantage. 
The divorce movement, it is safe to say — ^and we shall gain 
more light on the subject presently — is in large part an expression 
of woman's growing independence. 

3. Again, the process of liberation whose character has just 
been explained enables us to understand the underlying motive 
of the state in sanctioning an ever-extending list of legal causes 
of divorce. In the main, making all due allowance for mistakes, 
does not each new ground in effect give expression to a new 
ideal of moral fitness, of social justice, of conjugal rights? As 
civilization advances, the more searching is the diagnosis of 
social disease and the more special or differentiated the remedy. 
It is not necessarily a merit, and it may be a grave social wrong, 
to reduce the legal causes for a degree to the one "scriptural" 
ground. Adultery is not the only way of being unfaithful to 
the nuptial vow; not the only' mode of betraying child or spouse 
or society. For example, the most enlightened judgment of the 
age heartily approves of the policy of some states in extending 
the causes so as to include intoxication from the habitual use of 
strong drinks or narcotics as being equally destructive of con- 
nubial happiness and family welfare. Decidedly it is not a 
virtue in a divorce law, as often appears to be assumed, to re- 
strict the application of the remedy, regardless of the sufferings 
of the social body. Indeed, considering the needs of each par- 
ticular society, the promotion of happiness is the only safe 
criterion to guide the law-maker in either widening or narrowing 
the door of escape from bad marriages. 



IS8 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

4. A glance at the tables showing the relative number of 
decrees on each principal ground granted to the husband or to 
the wife, respectively, reveals the deep interest which the woman 
has in the divorce remedy. In 83 per cent, of all decrees granted 
for cruelty, in 90.6 per cent, of those granted for drunkenness, 
and 100 per cent, of those granted for neglect to provide, the 
husband was the offender and the wife the plaintiff. That the 
sources of the divorce movement are bad social conditions which 
may be remedied is illustrated by the sinister fact that directly 
or indirectly 184,568 divorces, or nearly 20 per cent, of the 
entire number reported for the two decades, were granted for 
intemperance; and in nine-tenths of these cases the culprit was 
the man. Surely the situation calls loudly, not for less divorce, 
but for less liquor and fewer saloons. 

The extent to which divorce is due to desertion challenges 
our most serious attention. The number of decrees on this 
ground reaches the astounding total of 367,502 or nearly 38.9 
per cent, of the entire number on all grounds for the two decades. 
Moreover, of the whole number of decrees granted to the hus^ 
band for all causes, 49.4 per cent. (156,283) or nearly half were 
for desertion; while 33.6 per cent. (211,219) or one-third of 
all those granted to the wife were for the same cause. Here too, 
the woman is the chief sufferer and the chief beneficiary. The 
causes of the phenomenon of desertion are doubtless complex; 
but in a remarkable way it is a signal proof of a transition phase 
in American society. In large measure, is it not due to our vast 
sociological frontier, urban as well as rural ? The marital rene- 
gade is lured by the ease with which under the existing condi- 
tions of social control he may hide himself on the range, in the 
lumber camp, in the mines, and amid the seething purlieus and 
slums of our great cities. Now for the abandoned family deser- 
tion often involves the bread-and-butter problem which the 
aggrieved spouse must have full liberty to solve. What is the 
remedy? Assuredly not the restriction of divorce, but the proper 
punishment of the deserter and the civilization of the socio- 
logical frontier. 



IS FREER DIVORCE AN EVIU 159 

5. There remains for consideration one more source of the 
divorce movement, and that the most prolific source of all. In 
no other way, perhaps, has mis-selection, the failure to develop 
methods of social control adequate to the new psychic character 
of the family been so harmful as in dealing with marriage. No 
one who in full detail has carefully studied American matri- 
monial l^slation can doubt for an instant that, faulty as are 
our divorce laws, our marriage laws are far worse. There is 
scarcely a conceivable blunder left uncommitted; while our 
apathy, our carelessness and levity, regarding the saf^^uards 
of the marriage institution are well-nigh incredible. We are far 
more careful in breeding cattle or fruit trees than in breeding 
men and women. Let me repeat what I have more than once 
written: the great fountain head of divorce is bad marriage 
laws and bad marriages. The center of the dual problem of 
reforming and protecting the family is marriage and not divorce. 
One "Gretna Green" for clandestine marriages, like that at St. 
Joseph, Mich., is the source of more harm to society than are a 
dozen "divorce colonies'' like that at Sioux Falls, S. D. Indeed, 
the "marriage resort" is the fruitful mother of the divorce colony. 
There is crying need of a higher ideal of the marriage relation ; 
of more careful "artificial selection" in wedlock. While bad 
legislation and a low standard of social ethics continue to throw 
recklessly wide the door which opens to marriage, there must of 
necessity be a broad way out. 

To the sixteenth-century reformer divorce is the medicine 
for the disease of marriage. Emphatically it remains so today. 
The wise reformer must deal with causes and not with effects. 
He will recognize that in a general but very real sense the 
divorced man or woman is a sufferer from bad social conditions. 
He will not waste his energy in unjustly punishing divorced 
people although some of them may deserve punishment. Rather 
he will strive to lessen the social wrongs of which the divorced 
man or woman is the victim. Let ecclesiastical synods, if they 
would serve society, concern themselves more with restraining 
the original marriages of the unfit. Let them reflect on the 
social wickedness of joining in wedlock the innocent girl with the 



l6o THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

rich or titled rake; of uniting in the nuptial bond those who are 
tainted by inherited or acquired tendencies to disease and crime. 
Therefore, to the question today put to me: "Is the freer 
granting of divorce an evil?" I answer: While social disease 
increasingly menaces the health and happiness of the family — 
and this in part because the family ideal is rising — z. more liberal 
application of relief is just and righteous. It is not without 
significance that the highest divorce rate is found in two of the 
most enlightened and democratic nations in the world — Switzer- 
land and the United States. Yet divorce is merely a healing 
medicine for marital ills. It is needful to apply the radical or 
preventive remedy. That remedy is proper social control; but 
adequate social control can be achieved only through the thorough 
socialization of education. We are in sore need of a rational sys- 
tem of education broad enough to embrace the whole complex 
problem of sex, marriage, and the family. That is the noblest 
and the hardest task which now confronts the American people. 

DISCUSSION 
Dr. Samuel W. Dike, Aubuindale, Mass. 

The paper of Professor Howard, it is enough to say, is worthy of the 
author of the monumental History of Matrimonial Institutions and admi- 
rably brings the subject before us. Let me first make some random 
remarks suggested by his statement of facts. 

I should say that divorce is both the evil and the symptom, both the 
cause and the effect, both the disease and the remedy or relief. Nor let 
us forget that divorce implies the confession of the helplessness of the 
case. That is, so far as the family in question is concerned, it is not a 
case for remedial treatment but for surgery. From one point of view 
every application for divorce presents the question: Is the case hopeless 
except as we use the knife and sever the bond? Have the parties them- 
selves, their friends, and society used every possible means for recovery, 
and are we taking the judicial knife as the last resort? 

Let us beware, too, of taking certain percentages in the statistics at 
their face value. For example, that women are petitioners in 67 per cent 
of the cases does not so much indicate that women are the chief sufferers 
to that extent as that it points to the probability that it is often more con- 
venient for the wife to bring the suit. Desertion, cruelty, drunkenness, and 
non-support are made to cover a multitude of other marital sins. The 
technical grounds chosen for a divorce are often those most easily worked 
with little regard to their reality. Mutual consent as the real cause is 



IS FREER DIVORCE AN EVIL? l6l 

probably increasing, perhaps rapidly. The large percentage of uncontested 
cases shows this. While women are more frequently the sufferers than 
men I think it probable that among certain classes the demand for dress 
and other luxuries, social ambitions, and sometimes aversion to mother- 
hood, as well as the selfishness and excessive sexual demands on the part 
of men, have much to do with divorce. 

That easy divorce is something of an incentive to hasty and incon- 
siderate marriage is clear from positive private testimony rather than 
from any statistics on the point One of our states, Connecticut, furnishes 
from its registration reports confirmation of Professor Howard's opinion 
that divorces as a rule do not issue in a speedy remarriage and that many 
divorced persons do not marry again. The number of divorced persons 
married in Connecticut for several years is about 40 per cent of the num- 
ber divorced in the same time. And the fact brought out in the government 
report that on the average six years elapses between separation and the 
application for divorce and three years more between the application and 
the divorce points very clearly to the probability that the desire for another 
marriage is not present at the time of the seeking of divorce in a large 
majority of the cases as has been hitherto supposed. Then the restrictions 
many states are now making on the remarriage of divorced persons does 
not seem to affect the divorce-rate very much. What Professor Howard 
says of the limited extent of migration for divorce is quite true. An exami- 
nation of the statistics of the Dakotas by counties shows that the illicit 
divorce business in those states was confined to three or four counties 
and that the state as a whole was not very far from normal. 

To my mind one of the most serious evils of our divorce business is 
suggested by the fact that in the last twenty years the percentage of 
divorces that occurred after twenty-one years of married life was 10.2 
per cent of the entire number of those divorced in the last twenty years 
and, what is more significant still, has risen to 10.2 per cent, from 7.8 per 
cent, in the preceding twenty-year period, an increase of 40 per cent in 
twenty years. It is true that in one aspect of the case this is less of an 
evil than divorce earlier in married life. But I think careful reflection win 
discover a grave evil in it 

But now let us pass to some considerations which the second part of 
Professor Howard's paper suggests. His main proposition is that "the 
modern divorce movement is an incident of a transition process in social 
evolution; and hence it is due primarily to social mis-selection and the clash 
of ideskls." Now while I think him substantially correct in this I would, 
for one, put the case a little differently. The word "transition" implies 
too much of suddenness and I think that "mis-selection" and the phrase 
"clash of ideals" do not quite cover the ground. I would state it in somewhat 
less of the terminology of scientific sociology. Perhaps I may use the 
generalization of Sir Henry S. Maine in his Ancient Law, when in looking 



l62 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

over the drift of western society for more than two thousand years he 
said that modern society had been marked by a movement from the family 
to the individual and from status to contract, the two movements having 
gone on together. In other words, contract, which underlies most busi- 
ness law, has taken the place of status in our treatment of most social 
relations, and along with it and as its cause too, has gone the substitution 
of the individual as the unit of social thought for the family. The growth 
of the larger combinations has been very largely at the expense of the 
family notwithstanding their reinforcement of it in many ways. 

The divorce movement is probably the most momentous of the evil con- 
sequences of this fundamental social change. The movement for the 
larger political rights of woman and for her greater industrial opportuni- 
ties has gone along with it And, as Maine also pointed out elsewhere, the 
movement in behalf of woman is not so much a movement in the interests 
of sex as it is a movement in the interests of property. It is the influence 
of property compelling woman to find an easier place under its industrial 
yoke that is forcing women into the ranks of the industries. The growth 
of property tends first to separate out individuals, both men and women, 
from all lesser corporate forms, like the family and the small business 
corporation, and, secondly, to ccHnbine them in the largest possible unities. 
Anarchy and socialism are the extremes of the outcome. The family, the 
primary social group, is between the upper and nether millstone of this 
process. Of course the great spiritual appeal of Christianity and of society 
to the individual during the centuries has had its part in the movement 

As a consequence of this profound social movement we have on the one 
hand the growth in much that is healthful for the individual and the 
development of the useful corporate institutions of modern society. But 
on the other hand we have an intense individualism with all its disin- 
tegrating forces. Egoism and selfishness do their destructive work in this 
soil. The family loses its organic character in the eyes of many and 
becomes a mere modus vivendi, dependent on the simple contract of busi- 
ness for its formation and easily dissolved by agreement of the parties who 
made it This is the theory of the social contract, which we discarded in 
our Civil War, applied to the most fundamental of all social institutions. 
And here lies the political mischief of our lax divorce system. 

But it has other than mere political evils. The 72,000 divorces annually, 
involving twice as many persons as husbands and wives, and about as 
many more children, and almost as directly as many more relatives are 
poisoning society quite as disastrously in other way^. For among the 
divorced reverence for each other, regard for the rights of others, love, 
sacrifice, and service as the nourishment of the sources of character are 
often entirely gone or sadly weakened. Industrial ambitions are lessened, 
frugal habits discouraged and the intellectual and moral training of a 
happy home that depends on a wholesome, honest facing of burdens, is 



IS FREER DIVORCE AN EVIL? 163 

weakened. In short the very warp into which is woven that religious, 
intelligent, industrious, and patriotic domestic life which makes the fabric 
of the nation is enfeebled at the place where of all others it should be 
strongest. The relief to the suffering individual is purchased at fearful 
cost to the social value of the individual, which after all is absolutely 
essential to his own perfection. The real problem is that of the family, 
whether we consider divorce, unchastity, lack of offspring, or the more 
subtle, yet I think more dangerous of its ills — ^those which come through 
the disuse of the family in the transfer of its legitimate functions to 
church, school, and other substitutes for the home. 

The direct influence of lax laws in producing the great increase of 
divorce in the last forty years is relatively small. On the whole the lax 
measures added to the statutes of our states in the last forty years have 
been few and comparatively unimportant And the tendency of legisla- 
tion the last twenty years has been decidedly in the direction of greater 
stringency. The systems that we now have are largely a legacy from 
colonial days and the early settlements of the West The remedies must 
be sought chiefly, though by no means wholly, in other directions. The 
instructions of the church and the school, better industrial conditions and 
an improved social sentiment must be our chief reliance for reform. We 
need what may be called the socialization of the individual through his 
better adjustment to society as a whole and that must come about through 
his better adjustment to the family and the other corporate institutions of 
society. 

If divorce is due "to mis-selection and the clash of ideals," a form of 
statement that seems to me somewhat inadequate, nevertheless I do not 
think the correction of ideals or better selections necessarily the immedi- 
ate cure of the evil or the chief means of meeting the difficulty. While 
undoubtedly better selections should be made and higher ideals held, yet 
there is more need of recognizing the value of loyalty to relations already 
existing, both for the good of society and the perfection of individual 
character. The moral cowardliness that runs away from a situation because 
it is hard is not a good thing out of which to make the men and women 
whom society needs. The ideal of a lifelong union in which hardships are 
used for the discipline of life should be the goal before us — ^that and ;iot 
the feeble adjustment of laws and institutions to human weaknesses and 
whims should be our aim, toward whose attainment we should move as 
fast as we can. We should remember that in social evolution mutations are 
far more possible than in the lower ranges of life. For here and in pro- 
portion as we rise in the scale of being, the human will comes in as a 
mighty factor for changing the trend of movement Human society has 
no business to succumb to drifting tendencies in its evolution. For it is 
called upon to resist tendencies and to shape them toward the highest ends. 

The first stage in modem society found the husband and wife merged 



l64 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

in one and that one, as Blackstone put it, the husband. The second stage 
has made them two individuals only with all the perils of individualism. 
May we not now have come to a third stage in which we are to find, not 
simply two individuals living in contractual relations, but two persons 
finding their relations to each other not only as individuals but as members 
of the family, which is something more than the sum of the parts com- 
posing it? To bring this about do we not need something more than a 
selfishly individualistic struggle for the narrow ideals of self? Must not 
the forces from within be directed and inspired to an evolution that finds 
its highest incentives from without? And may not what we need from the 
church be, not dogmas on divorce, but inspiration toward the highest ideals 
and real leadership in that direction? 



THE MARRING OF THE MARRIAGE BOND 
Rabbi Kbauskoff, D.D., Philadelphia, Pa. 

We are told that divorces are increasing three times as fast as our 
population; that during the past twenty years the marital bonds of nearly 
two millions of husbands and wives were legally severed; that, taking the 
United States as a whole, no less than one marriage in twelve has termi- 
nated by divorce; that in some states the proportion is as high as one to 
seven; that the number of divorces in our country is larger than that of 
all the European countries combined. 

This report, though no surprise to those who have observed the trend 
of things in late years, has startled the nation, and has kept the prophets 
of ill quite busy since its publication. Some of these are practically count- 
ing the days when marriage will be no more. Basing their estimate on 
the present rate of divorce, they claim that in the year 1920 every marriage 
entered into will ultimately be severed by the law. Trial marriage, advocated 
a few years ago as a novelty, according to their view, has become a 
reality. When men and women plight their troth before a preacher or 
magistrate it is no more for a union that shall last "until death do them 
part" but until such time as the one shall cease to care for the other. But 
a step, they assert, separates trial marriage from that free love which is 
being advocated in some of our latter-day novels and plays, and large is 
the number of those who have already passed from one to the other. 
Man's modern conception of marriage, according to them, is largely that of 
the poultry yard. Men and women, having been polygamous and polyan- 
dric in the remote past, are fast reverting to the primitive and bestial type 
out of which thousands of years of civilization have labored hard to lift 
them. So great has become the corroding influence of prosperity on 
marital morality that, when the passions bid, there religion and law for- 
bid in vain. 

While the facts and figures contained in the latest census report are 



IS FREER DIVORCE AN EVILf 165 

saddening, I fail to find in them a reason for utter disheartenment, or for 
such predictions of calamities as foretold by our prophets of ill. 

At times I am rather inclined to find in those figures a hope of brighter 
days coming, of a nobler conjugal life and a larger domestic happiness 
than have yet obtained in human society. When I analyze the causes of 
unhappy marriages, when I note by whom, for the most part, divorces are 
sought, to whom they are granted, and for what cause, when I find that 
two-thirds of the divorces are granted to wronged women, that wives find 
it more and more insufferable to continue yoked to husbands who have 
disgraced their manhood, who have violated the sanctity of womanhood, 
who have polluted the purity of the marital tie — ^when these facts I note, I 
see the coming day when marriage will have a far difiFerent meaning from 
what it has now, when entrance into it will constitute a coveted privilege, 
not a convenience or speculation or diversion, when purity not purse will 
constitute the absolutely necessary prerequisite, when all the honor that is 
now demanded of women will be demanded of man, when a lack of it in 
man will constitute as much of a bar to marriage, or to continuance in it, 
as a lack of it now constitutes a bar for woman. 

That there are more divorces in our country than there are in Europe 
we freely grant, but we do not prepare to grant that the fewer European 
divorces are a sign of a larger morality than is found among us, or of a 
higher regard for the sacredness of marriage, or of a greater respect for 
womanhood. 

The less number of divorces in European countries is due principally 
to the fact that in a large number of them the church, as well as the law, 
forbids divorce. A wife in those countries may suffer the agonies of hell, 
her husband may neglect her, starve her, abuse her, outrage her, dishonor 
her, he may be a drunkard, an idiot, a brute, a criminal, he may consort 
illicitly with a dozen other women, there is no help for her, she is yoked to 
him for life, she can escape from him only through the gateway of the 
grave. Although half a dozen matchmakers may have labored assiduously 
to effect the match, and although parents and notaries may have haggled 
long over the dower settlement, religion and law proceed in these countries 
on the theory that the match was made in heaven, and what God has joined, 
no man may sunder. 

And in many of those European cotmtries where divorce is permitted, 
woman has been so long accustomed to masculine tyranny, to being lorded 
over, to being regarded as belonging to a lower order of beings, to pos- 
sessing few if any rights, to being wholly dependent on man, to being 
treated as a household drudge, as a man's sport, as a mere child-bearer 
and child-raiser, that no matter how great the injustice she suffers, no 
matter how great the indignity heaped upon her, she regards it her duty to 
lick the hand that strikes her, to honor the man that dishonors her, to 
submit to every whim of her lord and master, to bear her cross with 



l66 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

patience and with resignation, for such is the lot of woman, such is the 
will of her Father in heaven. 

Not so the American woman. Occupying a position of equality with 
man, she insists upon her equal rights. The honor and virtue demanded 
of her she demands of her husband. She does not believe in one standard 
of morality for the wife, and another kind for the husband. Responsible 
for the moral well-being of her children, she will have their father as well 
as their mother serve them as exemplars in viitue. What constitutes 
moral guilt in woman constitutes it no less in man. Her whole nature 
rebels against that injustice that forever expels from decent society the 
woman that is led astray, while it opens wide the best of homes and the 
best of marital chances to the moral leper, if his bankruptcy in morals is 
compensated by a plethora of wealth. She has not yet discovered, and 
never will, that difference in sex constitutes a warrant for different morals. 
To her the seventh commandment, as well as the other laws of similar 
import, are as binding upon the man as upon the woman. If her husband 
would keep her love and respect, he must, in turn, continue to give her all 
the love and respect to which her womanhood, her wifehood, her mother- 
hood are entitled. It is well enough to teach the duty of blessing those 
that curse, loving those that hate, but woman, with all the divinity in her 
soul, is after all but human, and she cannot forever go on blessing where 
she is cursed, loving where she is hated. When much sinned against she 
has all she can do to keep herself from sinning; at times, alas, her strug- 
gle is hopeless and she succumbs. 

The true American woman will not, cannot, condone moral depravity in 
her husband, in the father of her children. As pure as he wants her so 
pure does she want him, or not at all. Her nature revolts against continu- 
ing in holy wedlock, in its full meaning, with a man whose every thought 
is vice, whose every breath is pollution, whose body is a sink of corruption, 
a whited sepulcher. For the sake of the public she will suffer quietly, 
much, and long, but in the end, she will value her self-respect more than 
the public's gossip, and free herself from a presence that poisons her moral 
atmosphere, that debases her body, soul, and mind. Possessing the Ameri- 
can spirit of independence, not afraid or ashamed to work, capable of self- 
direction, she will free herself from a bondage that is more painful to her 
than self-support and self-dependence can ever be. A thousand times 
rather will she brave alone the hardships of life, a thousand times rather 
will she battle alone single-handed for a livelihood for herself and her 
children, then continue in wedlock with a man whose troth at the mar- 
riage altar was a lie, whose professions of lasting love were but a hollow 
mockery, whose motive for marriage was but a bestial or mercenary one, 
who, notwithstanding sacred pledges given before God and man, continues 
after marriage the revels and debaucheries that marked his preparation 
for the holy state of matrimony. 



IS FREER DIVORCE AN EVIL? 167 

But man is not the only transgressor against the sacredness of mar- 
riage. Woman, too, bears a large share of the responsibility for the present- 
day frequency of marital separations. We were told that two-thirds of our 
annual divorces were granted to wives. What of the one-third that is 
granted to husbands? What of the desecration of the marital tie by 
woman? Considering the nature of womanhood, its greater seclusion and 
protection, its larger and longer training in modesty and self-control, con- 
sidering all this, is not the charge against woman as great as that against 
man? 

The preparation which young women are given in all too many homes 
is but a training calculated to lead in the shortest time possible from the 
marriage altar to the divorce coutt. From the day the daughter enters 
young womanhood, the chief thought of such homes is man-catching. To 
that end, no expense is spared, no extravagance denied, no field barred, no 
artifice shunned, that shall enable the gorgeously decked-out huntress 
quickest to entrap her victim, and to bring him conquered to her feet. 

With too many parents there seems to be little consciousness that, 
besides a body to hang clothes upon, and besides certain social accomplish- 
ments with which to charm, the marriageable daughter has also a mind, 
a heart, a soul, a pair of hands, that require training in the science and 
art of keeping the husband contented and happy within the home of her 
sovereignty, and keeping herself contented and happy with the prize she 
has won. There is no preparation for the needs and responsibilities of 
domestic life, of home-companionship, of economic housekeeping. There is 
no knowledge of the art of settling down contentedly and happily with the 
man to whom she is linked for life, no skill in harmonizing differences of 
tastes and temperaments, which unharmonized, often prove disastrous to 
early married life. There is no love implanted for the sacred joys of 
motherhood. There is no knowledge of the meaning of the word "help- 
mate." There is no conception of the difficulties involved in earning 
money, seeing how lavishly it is being expended upon her, seeing with 
what readiness her every demand for it is supplied. 

There is probably no thought which occupies a young society woman 
more than the thought of being married; there is probably no thought 
which occupies her less than that of how to be happy when married, or 
how to make her husband happy. 

Entering upon marriage with such a conception of its meaning, with 
such resolutions, it is not difficult to tell what its ending will be. When a 
young wife's hands and mind have nothing useful to do, they soon turn 
to the unuseful and ignoble. When a wife does not know the art of 
home-making, she soon opens for the husband the doors of other homes. 
When a wife has no love for her husband, when she refuses him her 
sympathy, encouragement, and companionship, a husband is very apt to 
seek these where he can find them. When a wife seeks to wield the 



l68 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

authority of the husband, she soon loses the privileges of the wife. When 
a wife's time is so much occupied with society as to have little or no 
time for a husband, it is not long before he finds those who have plenty 
of time for him. When a wife, of her own free will, bars out of her life 
the blessing of maternity, and with it a peace of heaven, she is very apt 
to send her matrimonial bark adrift without anchorage, and to increase 
the danger of its foundering upon the rocks of discontent, dissension, 
and disunion. When a wife accustoms herself to seek her pleasures out- 
side of her home, and without her husband, she not only points to her 
husband where he is to seek and find his pleasures, but also runs the danger 
of accustoming each other to seek apart pleasures that are forbidden. 
When a wife burdens her husband with extravagances beyond his ability 
to satisfy, she but hastens the day when he will endure neither the bur- 
den nor the wife. When, vampire-like, a wife saps a man of his man- 
hood instead of inspiring his soul with strength and enthusiasm to fight 
his battles and win his victories as behooves a helpmate, she soon finds her- 
self unable to live contentedly at the side of the wreckage of her making. 
When a wife feels that she cannot do without the extravagances which her 
husband will not or cannot grant, and if she has no resources of her own, 
she will endeavor to obtain them from others than her husband, and, not 
infrequently, at a cost for which settlement is made in the divorce- 
court. 

It is not whether there shall be one way or another way or no way at 
all out of marriage that is of prime import to society, but that couples 
shall live so happily together that there shall be no need of any exit at all. 
The real remedy lies not in making divorce difficult or impossible, but in 
making entrance into marriage hard, in taking every precaution in advance 
that those who join in holy wedlock for life shall possess those absolutely 
necessary prerequisites that may render possible a healthy, happy, sacred 
marital union. 

What better illustration of the truth of this than that which is afforded 
us by the history of the Jewish people? 

Their code of law recognized the right of divorce from the very first, 
and granted it for offenses far less weighty than those for which divorces 
are issued in even so obliging a state as Dakota. And yet, notwithstanding 
this readiness of the law to dissolve marital unions even for slight offenses, 
divorces in Israel were exceedingly rare. And rare have they continued in 
Israel to this day, because the care that was exercised in olden days with 
regard to a proper entrance to marriage, with regard to a proper prepara- 
tion for it, and a proper behavior while in it, is, for the most part, exer- 
cised to this day. 

The chief care of society must therefore be the prevention of the rise 
of marital misery, so that divorce, rigorous or lenient, may become wholly 
unnecessary. The present large number of divorces will, I believe, effect. 



IS FREER DIVORCE AN EVILT 169 

before long the needed cure. Where the church has failed the divorce court 
will succeed. 

Alarmed at last by the large number of marital separations, parents 
will inquire into the cause, and but a little search will show them that they 
themselves bear a large part of the responsibiity. And the young woman, 
too, will recognize the seriousness of marriage, and will duly fit herself 
for it She will recognize that it is largely the wife who makes or mars 
the home, that, however desirable a butterfly-life may be in maidenhood, 
it has no place in the wedded state. 



Dr. J. P. LiCHTENBERGER, PHILADELPHIA, Pa. 

I wish personally to express my appreciation of the admirable paper 
presented by Professor Howard. In the first half of the caption of the 
second division of his paper it seems to me he has given us not only the 
clue to the answer of the question under discussion but the basis for the 
right understanding of the whole divorce movement My contribution to 
the discussion, therefore, will be little more than a confirmation of the 
conclusions to which he has so skilfully led us. His contention that the 
divorce movement is the product of causes inherent in our modern social 
situation is strengthened by a study of the correlation of the statistical 
curve of the increasing divorce-rate with those representing the growth of 
population, the movement in civil and ecclesiastical legislation and those 
describing such social phenemena as suicide and insanity. Population shows 
a relatively constant ratio, and, as Mr. Hill has pointed out, cannot account 
for the divorce-curve. Professor Howard stated, a fact easily confirmed, 
that civil legislation has tended slightly toward stringency, while a careful 
survey of the enactments of the churches comprising the Inter-Church Con- 
ference on Marriage and Divorce reveals a purposive and vigorous effort 
to meet the exigencies of an accelerated divorce-rate by restrictive measures 
on the part of the clergy and the church. If effective, or even greatly 
influential, the divorce-rate should have shown, in the second period, a 
diminution. As a matter of fact, there is no perceptible correlation between 
"the threefold velocity" which the divorce-rate has gained in the last 
twenty years and these movements. The case is different when we turn 
to those phenomena which are clearly the product of social causes. I 
quote from Morselli on suicide (p. 152) : "The relation between the 
number of suicides and the general economical conditions is demonstrated 
by the continuous growth of the former in the century which beyond all 
others has witnessed the development of commercial relations, and the 
perfecting of the industrial arts by science. It seems almost as if the 
character of an epoch is reflected in that phenomenon of our social life, 
namely, the increase of psychological aberrations, nay, this reflection is 
such, that by the variable average alone, either of the mad or of suicides, 



170 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

or of criminals, the economical well-being of a year or of a country can 
be determined." The thoughtful investigator will not be at all surprised to 
find that the divorce rate bears a striking correlation to the phenomena 
here described, and Morselli, with equal propriety, might have included 
divorce among his indices of general prosperity. Unfortunately the waste 
products of an advancing civilization have often been mistaken for the 
signs of social deterioration and attention has been focused at the wrong 
point. Remedial measures have often hindered a process they were designed 
to help. We might as well seek to stop suicide by prohibitive legislation as 
divorce. The sane method, as Professor Howard has indicated, is con- 
structive treatment of the causes rather than destructive treatment of 
results. Marriage, in the aspect we are discussing, is the legal sanction 
of the social custom of the family. It is dependent upon law neither for 
its institution nor for its perpetuation. We need to get rid of the fear 
that the family will disintegrate unless held together by law. The family 
always has and probably always will arise and disintegrate as the neces- 
sities of life require with scant regard for our laws on the subject. 

It would be bold and presumptuous, within the limits of a ten-minute 
paper, to attempt to present a classification of the inherent causes which 
have produced "the mighty process of spiritual liberation" which Pro- 
fessor Howard assigns as the general cause of the freer granting of 
divorce. But since this spiritual process has material foundations it may 
not be amiss briefly to note them. 

1. The roots of social causation lie deep in the soil of physical processes. 
Social institutions enjoy no exemption from the law of survival. A d3mamic 
physical environment is destined to produce radical changes in the psy- 
chological and social processes. Therefore, in the new adjustment of the 
family, necessitated by the industrial revolution, are to be found, not only 
the causes of much domestic infelicity, but changed ideals regarding the 
family. Rising standards of living, pressure of the modern economic life 
upon the home, the passing of the economic function of the family and 
the economic emancipation of women are among the most important 
material facts which have produced changed ideas and ideals and serve 
as a partial basis on which to explain the movement toward spiritual 
liberation. 

2. The struggle for social liberation in the United States has been par- 
ticularly rapid since the Civil War. Individualism has thriven on our 
soil. Free from inherited traditions regarding the sacredness of institu- 
tions, inherent in a monarchical or despotic form of government, Americans 
assume toward them the same attitude as toward government itself. Insti- 
tutions exist to promote "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When 
for any reason they become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the 
people to alter or abolish them and to organize new ones, laying their 
foundations on such principles and organizing their powers in such form 



IS FREER DIVORCE AN EVILf 171 

as to them shall seem most likely to effect their welfare and happiness." 
(Slightly paraphrased.) The popularization of law, increased popular 
learning, and the improved social status of women, conspire to render 
intolerable domestic conditions placidly endured under the regime of eco- 
nomic necessity and patriarchal authority. 

3. These arguments seem to me implicit in Professor Howard's gen- 
eralizations and I have merely called attention to them, but a third of no 
less vital and fundamental importance he has omitted. I refer to the 
transition in religious and ethical concepts which has taken place in the 
same period. 

Since Darwin published his Origin of Species in i8s9, the whole intel- 
lectual process has been transformed. The old static, dualistic view of the 
world has been replaced by the new scientific outlook with its evolution- 
concept and its stringent genetic method. What are the results in the 
sphere of religion and ethics? Two generations have witnessed the passing 
of the dogmatic age in Protestant theology. The heresy trials of the last 
few decades witness the throes of transition as clearly as strikes and riots 
do the struggle of readjustment in the industrial world. The time- 
honored landmarks of religious authority have been obliterated and the 
new basis has not yet been fully established. The case is not different in 
the sphere of ethics. With the changed point of view have come new 
ethical valuations. The stern morality of Puritanism, based on theoretical 
standards, is being replaced by a practical morality arising out of our 
changed social conditions. As a combined result, virtue no longer consists 
in literal obedience to arbitrary standards set by community or church but 
rather in conduct consistent with the demands of a growing personality. 
Whereas piety in marriage once consisted in loyalty to the institution, and 
any suffering which might arise was to be endured rather than to bring 
reproach upon an institution vested with peculiar divine sanction, today 
our revised ethical and religious ideas cause us to feel that marriage was 
made for man and not man for marriage, and that the moral value of 
marriage lies in the mutual happiness of those who enter into it. Popular 
moral sentiment, which more than ever regards the ideal marriage as the 
supreme method of realizing the perpetuity and education of the race, 
nevertheless recognizes worse evils than divorce and has come not only to 
approve but to encourage the breaking of the conventional marriage tie 
to the crushing of the human spirit. 

A group of practical consequences are thus brought into view as the 
result of a rising and not a falling standard of ethics. 

I. There is a growing intolerance of evils formerly endured. Assume 

. that the moral status of marriage conditions remains the same and that 

moral perception is clarified. The result will be precisely the same as if 

the moral consciousness should remain undisturbed while immorality 

increased. Improved ethical standards or increased ethical culture may 



172 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

therefore become as efficient disturbing causes as increased immorality. 
Until the time comes when moral conduct shall more nearly conform to 
improved moral ideals, the high divorce-rate will continue to be a vigor- 
ous protest against the discrepancy. 

2. Practical ethics knows no distinction of sex and the "vicious dual 
standard of morality by which society still measures the sexual sins of 
men and women to the woman's disadvantage" is deemed ultimately to 
disappear. 

3. Ideals compatible with the nature of the economic family of neces- 
sity are inadequate under improved ethical and religious standards. As 
the family ministers less to the necessities of life it ministers more to its 
amenities. A relation deficient in the higher ethical values, easily endured, 
if at all perceived, in the family whose coherence rested chiefly upon its 
economic advantage, may furnish the strongest motive for disintegration 
in the family based upon mutual happiness and helpfulness. 

4. Perhaps the chief effect of the causes we are considering is mani- 
fest in the development of the new basis of sexual morality. As the func- 
tion of the family undergoes the transition from that of practical expedi- 
ency to the higher functions, uncongeniality and incompatibility become 
more serious matters. They are quite as capable of destroying the pur- 
pose of marriage as much graver difliculties under the old regime. Ethical 
values come to reside in those qualities of mutual attraction and prefer- 
ence which constitute the new basis of marriage. Aside from certain modi- 
fying limitations of social utility, sincere affection is coming to be recog- 
nized by society as the only normal and decent basis for marriage and 
parenthood.' It is from this point of view that we begin to regard all 
marriages based upon economic or social advantage as a bargain in sex and 
a form of legalized prostitution. And furthermore, that coercion, whether 
on the part of church or state, which compels one person to live with 
another person of the opposite sex in repugnant conjugal relations, does 
violence to all the finer ethical instincts of the soul and thus comes to be 
regarded as a species of despotism incompatible with free institutions. 

If these generalizations are approximately correct, then it is certainly 
clear that the actual compelling forces in the sphere of religion and ethics 
are not ecclesiastical enactments and reactionary clerical resolutions which 
represent the conservative influences in the church, but those which reside 
in the nature of our modem social, intellectual, and religious life, and 
while less spectacular are nevertheless actually producing the practical 
results we are witnessing in the accelerated divorce-rate. 

It is in these three groups of causes, namely, economic development, 
social progress, and religious and ethical readjustment, all of which have 
exerted their most potent influences in this country in the period covered 
by the two divorce reports, that we find the basis of the divorce movement. 

Adhering then a little more mercilessly to the forces of social causa- 



IS FREER DIVORCE AN EVIL? 173 

tion I do not wholly concur with the leader of the discussion in the strong 
emphasis placed upon "bad marriage laws and bad marriages." So far as 
hasty, ill-advised, and misfit marriages are concerned, the relatively small 
number of divorces (2 i-io per cent, in the first year) in the early years 
of married life does not reveal an overwhelming number of those mar- 
riages which result in speedy termination. That the great majority of 
divorces occur after the fifth year, and half after ten years of married 
life seems to indicate that causes other than those due to bad marriages 
are exerting a constant and increasing pressure. As to biological misfits 
and mis-selection, like those due to social diseases, it is difiicult to show 
why these should become increasmgly dynamic in the last four decades, 
except that the changed environment furnishes the stimuli, which I think 
is the true explanation. I should say, then, as Professor Howard did of 
divorce laws, that there are good marriage laws and bad marriage laws, 
but I should incline strongly to the same conclusion in respect to their 
effects, viz., that the solution of our problem would not be at hand even 
if all marriage laws were good so long as the forces operate as they now 
do in which we have located the causes of the rising divorce-rate. 

The increasing disruption of the family is a clearly recognized evil, but 
the necessary readjustment of the legal and social status of persons whose 
marriage relations have broken down, which we call divorce, is necessary 
and moral. Until the new family finds its equilibrium in the changed eco- 
nomic, social, and religious environment a high rate of divorce is inevitable, 
and is an index of progress rather thMi a sign of social disintegration. 



Hon. Walter George Smith, Philadelphia, Pa. 

1. Professor Howard is quite correct in tracing the origin of divorce to 
the Reformation. It is a strong inference from the theory that marriage 
is a civil contract, that the state recognized it and also recognized its 
dissolution. 

2. The professor is right also in his conclusion "that the real grounds 
of divorce are far beyond the influence of the statute maker, and to sustain 
the well-known dictum of Bertillon that laws extending the number of 
accepted causes of divorce or relaxing the procedure in divorce suits have 
little influence 'upon the increase in the number of decrees.'" And, of 
course, all must agree with him that reforms of the statute may exert a 
morally beneficent effect, though a narrow one, and such laws as the decree 
II wt and the other recommendations of the Divorce Congress of 1906 
"would greatly contribute to the creation of the healthful legal environ- 
ment" 

3. Again the professor is absolutely right in saying that the fundamental 
causes of divorce "are planted deeply in the imperfections of the social 
system, notably in false sentiments regarding marriage and the family, and 



174 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

which can only be removed through more rational principles and methods 
of education." 

4. Again his inference is just that from the analysis of the figures of the 
report of Director North, though lie puts in, in the form of a query, that 
"they .... in actual practice reveal an astonishing leaning toward a freer 
granting of divorce" and "disclose a tendency toward dissolution of wed- 
lock by mutual consent or even at the demand of either spouse." 

5. And again we can agree with him and with the Rev. Dr. Dike that 
"the establishment of uniform laws is not the central point of the divorce 
problem." 

6. I confess I do not tmderstand the professor's reasoning from the 
statistics that "there are nearly twice as many divorced in the twelfth year 
of the wedded life as in the first. Now, when we consider that probably 
there are more people in the first than in the eighteenth year of married 
life, and that we have more cogent reasons to explain the laxity of the 
marriage bond during the earlier period, we are scarcely warranted in 
assuming that liberal divorce laws in themselves are perceptibly weakening 
the nuptial tie." 

7. While it is not fair to assume that a very large proportion of mar- 
riages are entered into with the deliberate intention of obtaining a divorce 
later, yet here is the qualification to distinguish between that which is 
explicit and that which is implicit. The community are being gradually 
educated (if they are not now fully educated) to a knowledge of the fact 
that with little trouble, little expense, and a little loss of social prestige (the 
last becoming more and more negligible) marriages can be terminated 
practically at the will of the parties. Surely this must have the effect of 
making them more careless in assuming the marriage relation. 

8. Nor can I believe with the professor that the proportion of divorces 
obtained for the purpose of entering into new marital relations is not very 
significant, notwithstanding the inferences he deduces from the Prussian 
and Swiss statistics. 

9. With the rest of the professor's paper I am compelled for the most 
part to disagree. Perhaps this disagreement arises to a certain extent from 
a lack of appreciation of the professor's terminology. When he speaks of 
"the mighty process of spiritual liberation which is radically changing the 
relative positions of man and woman in the family and in society," and points 
out with apparent satisfaction that "more and more wife and child have 
been released from the sway of the housefather and placed directly tmder 
the larger social control;" when he speaks of the new solidarity of the state 
as being won at the expense of the old solidarity of the family, and says 
that "beyond question the individualization for the sake of socialization 
is producing the loftier ideal of the marital union and a juster view of the 
relative functions of the sexes in the world's work," and adds that "immedi- 
ately from the very nature of the process it has inured most to the advan- 



IS FREER DIVORCE AN EVILf 1^S 

tag« of the woman/' he is expressing satisfaction with a gradual social 
revolution that fills my mind with alarm, because it is based upon an abso- 
lute extinction of a fundamental religious principle; it is attempting to do 
what nature has not done in giving an equality of responsibility to man and 
to woman, and is setting up a deified state in the stead of the God upon 
whose laws, both natural and revealed, our civilization has been founded. 

I deny that the granting of divorces from 1887 to 1906, where the appli- 
cants in 66 per cent, have been women, has resulted otherwise than in 
demoralizing the attitude of men ?nd of women toward the married state. 

Fortunately, there are certain fundamental principles of natural justice 
that all men share in common, and there are certain benevolent tendencies 
known as natural virtues which exist strongly in some natures where 
religion seems never to have held sway. These noble dispositions, generous 
impulses and compassionate feelings appear in all that Professor Howard 
has said. He sees the evils arising from immorality in all its phases upon 
the part of the husband, and the consequent suffering that ensues to the 
wife, and he thinks that by removing the husband from the position in which 
he has been placed by nature and permitting the' wife to hold over him the 
constant threat of divorce the situation will be cured. This is the "per- 
verted chivalry*' of which Sidney Brooks wrote not long ago in endeavoring 
to find an explanation of the marvelous growth of divorce laws in the 
United States. 

Of course. Professor Howard and men of his school are at the opposite 
pole from men who look upon the marriage relation as a sacrament, as a 
relation that rises so high above a civil contract that the state is guilty 
of usurpation in attempting to dissolve it Marriage, it should be borne in 
mind, up to the time of the Reformation was looked upon as a status 
creating the family, and the family antedated the state, the state proceeding 
from the family. The attempt to individualize so as to give to man and 
woman the same sphere of action is going contrary to nature. It is not a 
question whether man is superior or inferior to woman. I suppose most of 
us are united in the belief that to woman is given the greater natural 
purity, the greater natural spirituality. Certainly those virtues that are 
peculiar to the feminine will not lack of recognition in any assembly of 
educated men, and surely it is the finest test of civilization that it gives 
to woman that peculiarly exalted position that is, in accordance with true 
chivalry, the position that is hers, not by the compulsion of any law, but by 
the recognition of her real high place in the ideal community. But the 
attempt to establish an equality that results in comradeship, that endeavors 
to ignore the relative strength, mental and physical, of the male and female, 
men who have studied the philosophy of history aright, even without a 
religious bias, must conclude is founded upon fallacy. I suppose the near- 
est approach to an equality of the sexes in the sense in which the term is 
understood by those who are advocating it in these modem days existed 



176 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

in the time of the Roman Empire under Augustus and his successors to 
the time of Constantine. Is it desirable to have a similar social condition 
in these modem days? 

It is a pleasure to agree with Professor Howard when he says "the 
center of the dual problem of reforming and protecting the family is mar- 
riage and not divorce." All he says upon this subject meets with my hearty 
concurrence. 

To sum up, in my judgment divorce is both a cause and an effect I do 
not believe that any education of the character that Professor Howard 
suggests, no matter how widespread, can ever change nature, and the legis- 
lator who endeavors to change it will find his laws are a dead letter. For 
many centuries, and even down to our own time, divorce was so exceptional 
among the masses of the people, even among those who followed the teach- 
ings of Luther and his associates, that it was practically negligible. 

The contention that Switzerland and the United States are the most 
enlightened and democratic nations of the world would, of course, not be 
contested in either of them. But what shall we say of England, of Ire- 
land, not to speak of the Latin countries and Canada, where divorce is prac- 
tically unknown? 

It seems to me that the chasm between men of the new school of 
thought, who believe that the tendencies of human nature implanted by the 
Creator can be regulated otherwise than by religious sanction, and those 
who believe that the inevitable tendencies of our common nature can be 
controlled only by an appeal to religion cannot be bridged. Professor 
Howard has presented in scholarly form the best results of what is known 
as the scientific method of considering the divorce problem. I trust I do 
him no injustice when I say that he forgets the proposition, which is old as 
time. A recent writer has expressed it thus: 

"For that there is a distinction between right and wrong; that orthodoxy 
and heresy are absolute realities and not mere prejudices; that there is 
such a thing as standing on CMie's feet and seeing the world aright, and 
such a thing as standing on one's head and mirror-reading the universe. 
.... We have talked of progress, of the relativity of knowledge, of science 
and empirical realities until we have come to the conclusion that absolute 
reality and absolute truth are sheer adumbrations, the survival of phan- 
toms created by the human mind in its myth-making and fetish-worshiping 
stages. 'General theories are everywhere contemned; the doctrine of the 
rights of man is dismissed with the doctrine of the fall of man. Atheism it- 
self is too theological for us today. Revolution is too much of a S3rstem, 
liberty too much of a restraint. We will have no generalizations. Everything 
matters except evenrthing.' But why this fear of the infinite and the absolute? 
Are not the finite and the relative equally mysterious? .... And since the 
credentials they produce fail to satisfy him, he decides that these noisy 
latter-day prophets are nothing but common heretics — ^men who struggle 



IS FREER DIVORCE AN EVIL? l^^ 

vainly in a topsy-turvydom of their own creation. They are obsessed by 
what he calls 'the negative spirit,' the spirit that discovers weakness and 
failure, the spirit of disillusionment and dead ideals. 'The eye that can 
perceive what are the wrong things increases in an uncanny, and devouring 
clarity, while the eye which sees what things are right is growing mistier 
and mistier till it goes almost blind with doubt .... To us light must 
be henceforth the dark thing, the thing of which we cannot speak. To us, 
as to Milton's devils in pandemonium, it is darkness that is visible.' And 
yet we talk of progress, and modernism has become almost a religion." 



Professor E. A. Ross, University op Wisconsin 

First, a word touching ecclesiastical pronouncements on this problem. 
Qergymen say they are in a position to state what is the will of God in 
the matter of divorce. We sociologists, less fortunate than they, know no 
way of settling the problem save by painstakingly ascertaining what divorce 
policy conduces to the greatest welfare of the individuals concerned and of 
society, in the long run. Now, either these two standards — the divine and 
the human— accord, or they do not If God wills the happiness of his 
creatures, then we may rest in the assurance that the right interpreters of 
the divine will regarding divorce will, along their chosen route, reach, with 
an enviable swiftness and ease, the same practical conclusions as the sociolo- 
gists, who make the effect of individual and social well-being the basis of 
judging an institution. 

If, on the other hand, it be held that the divine decrees regarding divorce 
may clash with the welfare of the individual and of society m the long run, 
then those who undertake to declare the divine will had better provide 
themselves with very solid and incontestable credentials if they expect 
people to follow their guidance, even at the expense of individual and 
social happiness. 

The champions of marriage as a sacrament twit us with standing for 
marriage as a mere civil contract There are, to be sure, many shallow 
people who take the latter view; but I do not believe that the scientific 
students of society assimilate marriage with an ordinary contract Their 
view is that marriage is a socially approved status, which a man and a 
woman voluntarily adopt, but which they may not renounce without the 
consent of society. 

I am not of those who insist a grown man and a grown woman may 
assume any mutual relation they please. The welfare of the children — 
if there are any — ^and of society at large must certainly come into reckon- 
ing. At the same time, I fear our discussion has so far dwelt too exclu- 
sively on these factors. Surely the individual happiness of the mismated 
couple should count as at least a factor in the settlement of the problem. 
After all, divorce is not a monster going about breaking up happy homes. 



178 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

No harmonious union was ever ended by divorce. The fact that in twenty 
years the proportion of divorces granted to couples who had been married 
twenty-one years or more, has increased from 8.3 per cent to 10.6 per cent 
was cited as if something ought to be done about it I agree it is sad to 
see a man and woman give it up after the years have brought them to the 
time of life when new and satisfying ties are not easily formed. Still, is 
it not rather presumptuous for society to tell two middle-aged people, 
probably without young children, who, after twenty-one years of experience, 
agree they would be happier apart, that it knows better than they do what 
is best for them? 

Excepting the small proportion of cases of hopeless incompatibility of 
temperament, a divorce testifies, no doubt, to some defect in efficiency or 
character in one or both of the spouses. Our divorces are, therefore, 
symptoms of a great evil, but it does not follow that the evil is any greater 
now than it was formerly nor that the evil can be lessened by narrowing 
the way of exit from marital unhappiness. Let those who are alarmed by 
growing divorce look further back. Let them center their efforts on 
lessening the proportion of unhappy marriages. There are open to them a 
number of promising policies which I shall commend to their consideration 
without comment. 

1. Instruction of girls in domestic science, housekeeping, etc. 

2. Systematic instruction of the youth of both sexes in the ethics and 
ideals of the marriage relation. 

3. Safe-guards in custom, perhaps in law, against the marriage of pure 
women to men tainted with venereal disease. 

4. Marriage only at place of residence of one of the parties. 

5. Repudiation of the "common-law marriage." 

6. A filing of declaration of intention to marry not less than (say) six 
weeks before the issuance of a marriage license. (Statistics show that the 
success of a marriage is in direct relation to the length of time the parties 
have been acquainted before marriage.) 

7. Where the volume of business warrants it, the creation of special 
divorce tribunals on which women shall sit as well as men. 



Concluding Remarks of Professor Howard 

In his address closing the discussion of the session. Dr. Howard said 
in substance: It is objected by Dr. Lichtenberger that too much importance 
is assigned to bad marriage laws as a cause of divorce; and that this is 
inconsistent with the position that divorce statutes, good or bad, have little 
influence on the divorce-rate. In reply, it is freely admitted that bad 
marriage law is not the chief source of divorce. Nevertheless, it will 
account for the dissolution of wedlock in far more instances than will a 
bad divorce law. For, in reality, clandestine marriage are very often due 



IS FREER DIVORCE AN EVIU 179 

to this cause; and clandestine marriages are apt to terminate in divorce. 
Moreover, bad marriage laws may permit or fail to prevent the union of 
those who are unfit because of venereal disease, insanity, crime, or degen- 
eracy. Thus there is a radical difference between a bad divorce law and a 
bad marriage law. 

Professor Ross likewise believes that too much stress has been laid 
upon 'l)ad marriage laws and bad marriages" as the center of the divorce 
problem; and he believes that we must go deeper in harmony with the 
second proposition of Dr. Howard's paper. But do not "bad marriages" 
really go to the heart of the problem? Marriages, not legally, but soci- 
ologically bad, are meant They include frivolous, mercenary, ignorant, 
and physiologically vicious unions. They embrace all that would be for- 
bidden by Francis Galton's science of Eugenics; all that might in part be 
prevented by a right system of education. Indeed, bad marriages are the 
cause of the clash of ideals referred to. At present men and more fre- 
quently women enter into wedlock ignorantly, or with a vague or low 
ideal of its true meaning. The higher ideal of right connubial life, of 
spiritual connubial Ife, often comes after the ceremony. It is ex post 
facto; and it is forced upon the aggrieved by suffering, cruelty, lack of 
compatibility, "prostitution within the marriage bond." An adequate sys- 
tem of social and sex education would tend to establish such ideals before 
the ceremony. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." 

Dr. Dike objected to the form of the second proposition, believing that 
Sir Henry Maine's dictum, that the movement of progressive societies has 
been from status to contract, is a more satisfactory expression of the evo- 
lutionary process tmder consideration. To this criticism it may be replied 
that Maine published his Ancient Law in 1861, many years before the birth 
of sociology as now understood. While it is true that since Roman days 
there has been a great advance from status to contract in the sphere of 
legal relations; it is not less true that in the present half-century there has 
been a vast progress from individualism to collectivism, from the person 
to the state. Were Maine now living, doubtless he would see the need 
of reshaping his dictum to express the new process of "individualization 
for the sake of socialization." Not individual contract but social control 
is the key to our problem. 

Mr. Smith has brilliantly presented the sacramental conception of 
indissoluble wedlock. "I have a proper respect," declared Professor Howard, 
"for the courage and firmness with which the ancient church of Rome 
maintains her ideals, even her mediaeval ideals. In truth, from her unity, 
her centralization of authority, the Catholic Church today holds the point 
of vantage which sometime under a wise and progressive head may make 
her among religious organizations the leader in social achievement But 
progress cannot be won by clinging to the authority of ancient ideals in 
social questions. We are assured that indissoluble monogamic marriage is 



l8o THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

according to both natural and divine law. But did natural law cease to work 
in old Jewish days? May it not be possible that natural law now guides 
social evolution? Moreover, is marriage any more "divine" than other 
social institutions? Was the only sacred wedlock created in the Garden 
of Eden by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Verily there are more 
gods than one, if we are to judge from the comparative history of matri- 
monial institutions. Many backward, even barbarous, peoples, who never 
heard of Javeh, are quite capable of teaching us useful lessons regarding 
divorce and marriage. Nay, in the days of Abraham, 2250 b.c.^ according 
to the Code of Hammurabi, the Babylonians, the teachers of Israel, had 
developed marriage and domestic institutions in many respects far more 
"modem" than those described in the sacred scriptures of the ancient 
Jews. Besides, as Rabbi Krauskopf has just shown, the God of Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob did not forbid divorce. 

Truly, for the apostle of social righteousness, God did not close his 
revelation in olden times. Today, more dearly than in Judaea, he inspires 
the hearts and brains of devoted men and women to cleanse the sltun, 
battle with social disease, and rescue women and children from sexual or 
industrial slavery. It is high time to cease the appeal to mere authority, 
and to accept marriage, the home, and the family as purely human social 
institutions to be freely dealt with by men according to human needs. 



HOW FAR SHOULD MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY BE 
INDIVIDUALIZED? 



PROFESSOR JAMES E. HAGERTY 
Ohio State University 



The changes in industrial and social organization in recent 
times have modified greatly the relationship between members of 
the family which existed in the patriarchal regime. The relations 
of the patriarch to the members of the household and the eco- 
nomic system which he controlled are too well known to need 
restatement here. The family was organized to perpetuate the 
family name and unity, and no rights of individual members 
were recognized which compromised this purpose. This ideal 
has been changed to one where social welfare is sought in the 
recognition of the rights of individual members of the family 
to the greatest possible latitude in the development of their 
capacities and powers. The power of the father and husband in 
the family has gradually weakened, while the rights and privil^^ 
of the wife and mother and the children have been strengthened. 
These changes are expressed both in statute law and in public 
opinion. 

The rights and privileges of the wife have been most com- 
pletely developed in America. A discussion of the sphere of 
woman has attained a dignity which prevails in no other country, 
and this is a clear indication of her status. 

The marriage contract still in use requires the husband "to 
love, cherish, and protect." The wife is required "to love, honor, 
and obey." The husband must support, protect, and be responsi- 
ble for his wife. The wife is required to render personal service 
to the husband, and to obey him. While in places the wife is 
l^ally bound to these obligations imposed upon her, public 
opinion does not support the claims of the husband to the wife in 
these respects. While she is expected to conform to the habits, 
tastes, and peculiarities of her husband, he has no redress if she 

iSi 



i82 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

refuses. However, he is the head of the home and the wishes of 
the wife must yield to his when their interests clash. 

When unmarried, woman's right to earn her own support by 
going into industrial pursuits is generally conceded in the United 
States. When she earns her living, she is free from the obliga- 
tions due a parent arising from economic dependence on him, 
and is thus, so far as economic reasons are concerned, under no 
requirement to marry. If woman owns property when married, 
she is permitted to hold this property and to have jurisdiction 
over it in nearly every instance. In some states she has the same 
rights of inheritance as the husband and the tendency of legisla- 
tion is to put her upon the same plane as the husband in this 
regard. While the common law does not give the mother the 
right to the labor and services or earnings of a child until it is 
of age or marries the same as the husband, there is a tendency 
to grant her these rights especially if she is a widow. Her title 
to the earnings of her children in the latter case ought to be much 
more clear than that of a husband in any case except that of 
misfortune. 

There is a tendency to consider the earnings of the husband 
as a joint product to which both husband and wife have an equal 
title. Where this principle has given rise to the allowance system 
the wife is free from the petty annoyances of begging funds from 
the husband to meet the expenses of the household. She then 
enjoys a regular income which may be used for her own personal 
expenditures as well as for the keeping of the house. The allow- 
ance system may be used however in a way not in conformity 
with the above theory. The husband may decide how much the 
wife IS to have out of his earnings for certain purposes, and the 
wife may have nothing to say in regard to the matter. Upon 
the other hand, without the allowance system the total household 
and other expenses may be met in such a way as to emphasize 
the fact that the family earnings are a joint product. Whether 
the allowance or some other system is used the method 
employed in meeting expenditures should not embarrass the 
wife; it should result from a conference in which the husband 
and wife are equal factors in the decision. 



INDIVIDUAUZATION OF MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY 183 

Recent laws which give the wife the same rights in inherit- 
ance as the husband tend to support the theory that the family 
earnings are the joint product of husband and wife in which 
each should share equally. The slow development of this theory 
must be traced to other factors in the subordination of woman 
than those connected with her relative earning power. Man's 
sphere has been almost exclusively in the productive occupations 
which yield financial returns. Woman's work has been that of 
home-making and home-keeping and consequently she has been 
engaged in the so-called improductive consumption for which 
there is no monetary return. But in home-keeping she renders a 
service to her family and society which g^ves her an economic 
value equal to that of her husband. The recognition of this 
principle, however late, means much for the complete emancipa- 
tion of woman. 

In the household, in the making of the home, woman renders 
her greatest social service and finds her highest function. Here 
she should be queen and priestess and no household arrangements 
should interfere with the development of her personality in its 
highest functioning. 

The education and culture of woman is conceded in the 
United States, and it has been made possible for her to receive 
training equal to that received by man. Opportunities for the 
higher education of woman have not imtil recently been afforded 
on the continent of Europe outside of Switzerland, and the neces- 
sity for training comparable to that which man receives is even 
now denied. In the United States the right to an education has 
been put upon individualistic grounds, that is, the right to self 
development, to culture, and to happiness. This notion has 
arisen here as a part of our democracy. 

The social advantages of the higher education of woman have 
not been properly emphasized in this country. Women as moth- 
ers are the educators of the children and on this account they 
should be well trained. As soon as we understand that the 
environment of infancy and early childhood is of more import- 
ance than later training we will appreciate the social importance 
of cultured mothers. Long ago in his great essay "What knowl- 



l84 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

edge is of most worth ?" Mr. Spencer gave due emphasis to the 
social need for well-trained mothers. 

A recognition of an equal partnership of husband and wife 
in the marital contract is the present tendency. Public opinion is 
tending to support this view r^ardless of the wording of the 
marital contract, and laws in the statute-books of states discrimi- 
nating against the wife are becoming dead letters. In no group 
does public opinion support the coercive authority of the husband 
except among the lower classes, and even here laws protect the 
wife against cruel and malicious treatment by the husband. Most 
people are willing to concede the advantages of the equal partner- 
ship of husband and wife, both upon the contracting parties and 
upon the children of the family. The education of woman quali- 
fies her for this relationship. Where the husband and wife are 
upon the same level, where the woman is educated so that she is 
in fact the equal of her husband, this sort of marital relationship 
elevates the social and spiritual status of the family. Where this 
relationship exists parents can co-operate to good advantage in 
training and in developing their children. 

The emancipation of woman has introduced certain social 
conditions the value of which is questionable. When woman is 
educated she marries later in life and is less inclined to marry. 
She uses better judgment in marrying and will not marry in a 
given case unless the alliance gives a very definite promise of 
happiness. She is very likely to make head interests a necessary 
supplement to heart interests. With the opportunities for women 
in industrial pursuits she is freed from the economic necessity 
of marrying. When she marries later in life, she has fewer 
children. If this reduction in numbers means an improvement in 
quality, the outcome is wholesome. 

Biological problems, however, are introduced which as yet 
are unsolved. All we can do is to state them. It is claimed 
that the chances of having offspring diminish with the better 
education and the higher development of woman, and when she 
becomes a mother, the offspring are not as healthy and vigorous 
as are those of other classes. 



INDIVIDUAUZATION OF MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY 185. 

CHILDREN 

The social recognition of the rights of the child against the 
inordinate claims of the guardian are now well recognized in 
democratic countries. There was a time when a child could be 
punished for failing to pay the debts of a parent and for the mis- 
deeds of a parent, so strong was the family bond and the family 
obligation. These restrictions have long since been removed. 

Nearly ever)rwhere the father is entitled to the labor and 
services or compensation for the labor of a child until it is of 
age. Many restrictions have been placed, however, upon the 
labor of a child. Child-labor laws forbid the employment of 
children under a certain age in specified employments. In rural 
communities, as a rule, the parent is rewarded by the fruits of the 
labor of children until they are of age. In cities, however, where 
as a rule the minor does not work for the parent, public opinion 
does not support the claim of the parent to the rewards of the 
toil of the minor unless the income of the latter is necessary to 
maintain the household. When he lives at home he will pay his 
board and the balance of his income will be used in defraying 
his personal expenditures. 

The child-labor legislative movement b^an in England in the 
early part of the nineteenth century as a result of the abuses 
connected with the employment of pauper children in the fac- 
tories. This movement which continued throughout the century 
consisted in placing greater and greater restrictions on the em- 
plo)rment of children. In the United States a movement compar- 
able to this has taken place. Most of the Northern states have 
child-labor laws. Through the aggressive policy of the National 
Child Labor Committee this movement has extended to the 
Southern states. In the Northern states the tendency now is to 
make the child-labor laws more uniform and to raise the minimum 
age at which children can be employed. 

These laws are passed primarily to protect the child, to give 
him ample time to secure the rudiments of an education, to give 
his body a chance to grow to normal proportion, and to protect 
his morals while he is young from the contaminating influence 



l86 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

of evil associates. The secondary purpose of this legislation is 
to safeguard the interests of society, as its security and advance- 
ment depend upon a well-trained moral citizenship free from 
physical degeneracy. 

The child may be protected immediately from his own desires, 
or from the selfishness of his parents, or from the needs of the 
family of which he is a member. Social experience has taught 
us that in the absence of child-labor laws, the child would neither 
be educated nor be given the proper physical development. The 
opportunity to earn money has enticed many a child to a factory 
at an early age. Here lack of either a mental or industrial educa- 
tion and a narrow routine position have condemned many a child 
to a permanent mediocre position and a low standard of living. 
The selfishness of the parent may also start the child of tender 
years to labor with the above-named results. In these laws the 
state invades the home and protects the child from its own ignor- 
ance and its parents' shortsighted selfishness. The righz to pass 
child-labor laws, and the necessity for them are now generally 
conceded. 

Education is becoming less optional than formerly, as most of 
the states are passing compulsory educational laws requiring chil- 
dren to attend school until they are 13, 14, 15 years of age, or 
until they have finished certain branches of study. Experience 
has shown that many children will not be educated unless they 
are required to go to school. Even with a compulsory law the 
truant officer must be vigilant to enforce it. 

Reports of the Commissioner of Education show that our 
achievements in general education are even yet very restricted. 
In the report of the Department of Education for 1900 it is 
stated that 

over 50 per cent, of all public-school pupils were in the first and second 
grades and were less than nine years of age ; 87.5 per cent, were in the first 
five grades and under twelve years of age. 

In his report for 1908 the Commissioner says that 

The mere ability to read and to write indicates a very slight remove from a 
crass ignorance, and a large proportion of our people are in danger of 
stepping at this point. The early withdrawal of pupils from school is a 



INDIVIDUAUZATION OF MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY 187 

fact tiniversally recognized, although up to this time there have been few 
systematic investigations as to the extent and the causes of the evil. It 
is, however, significant that they all indicate a marked decline in school 
attendance between the fourth and fifth school years or grades, and con- 
tinued decrease thereafter. 

Education is considered a social function and social right has 
taken priority over family rights. In democracy everything 
depends on the quality of the citizenship, for without an educated 
citizenship democracy must fail. A census of our prison popula- 
tion will show that the great majority of criminals are ignorant. 
One^third of the 1,600 convicts of the Ohio Penitentiary cannot 
read or write and the education of another third of these con- 
victs is limited simply to the ability to read and write. As condi- 
tions here are typical of those prevailing in similar institutions, 
the shortsightedness of our past social policy in not making edu- 
cation obligatory will at once be obvious. A showing equally as 
bad could be made for ignorance as a cause of pauperism. The 
positive side of social action is of more significance to the state 
than the negative. It is more important to train good citizens 
because of the value of such citizens to themselves and the state 
than it is for the state to protect itself against the demoralizing 
influence of the anti-social criminal and dependent classes. 

The state invades the home for another reason, and passes 
judgment on the method of governing the family. If parents 
abuse or maltreat their children, if they allow them to have evil 
associates, if the moral atmosphere surrounding the home is im- 
pure and demoralizing, the state steps in and takes the children 
from the parents. Here parental authority reaches its last ditch. 
It may be exercised if it is wholesome, and if the function ren- 
dered cannot be performed in a better way by the state, as the 
educational function. However, when parents are deprived of 
their children by the state, the latter are placed in another home. 
The best judgment of child-saving authorities today is that the 
normal home is the best possible environment for the growth 
and development of children. Institutional homes for children 
have been tried but are now considered by the best authorities as 
very inferior substitutes for home training. 



l88 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

One other way in which parental authority has been weakened 
in the United States remains to be mentioned. The right of 
parents to dispose of offspring in marriage is a survival of 
parental ownership. In Gennany the right of parents to choose 
a husband for a daughter or a wife for a son is still conceded. 
In a niunber of continental countries practically similar parental 
rights exist. In the United States the consent of parents to mar- 
riage of children is necessary only in case of minors, but when 
minors marry without parental consent, the marriage is valid. 
Who will deny that better unions result when choice is left to the 
contracting parties rather than to parents? Parental dictation 
in these matters is so repugnant to our theories of individual 
rights that efforts to control usually result adversely. 

The modem family is becoming democratic in many ways. 
Coercive power is giving way to control by persuasion. It is 
generally admitted that children are under better control when 
persuasive instead of coercive methods are used. When given 
privileges and responsibilities this method of control trains them 
for efficient citizens in a democracy. 

Certain social and industrial forces have been at work which 
have weakened the solidarity of the home and have released its 
members from some family obligations. Formerly certain house- 
hold industries were well developed. Some of these have been 
taken out of the home in relatively recent times. The kitchen is 
now the only productive factor in the home, and the preparation 
of many kinds of foods which were formerly produced in the 
kitchen, is now left to factories. Where the boarding-house and 
the family hotel are in use, even the kitchen has ceased to be a 
factor in home economics. Where the industries have been 
removed from the home, children have been released from certain 
obligations of household duties. 

The home was once a place of worship, and family prayers 
in religious families were regular features. The religfious educa- 
tion of the children, which formerly took place in the home, has 
now been assumed by the Sunday school in connection with the 
church. The prayer meeting has tended to take the family from 
the home to the church for religious worship, and the church, in 



INDIVIDUAUZATION OF MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY 189 

a Still wider way, has assumed most of the religious functions 
of the home. 

In education the former home interests have been invaded to 
the greatest extent. With the development of the public school, 
and especially with compulsory education, children are sent from 
the home to be educated. With the appearance of the kinder- 
garten, the home is turning over very small children to the school 
for purposes of education. The play-ground, the social settle- 
ment, and the socialized school are meeting in a much larger way 
the educational needs of children. 

These institutions are breaking up the solidarity of the family, 
and are making the individual members less dependent upon each 
other, and upon parental authority. What is still worse, parents 
are in danger of delivering over to these outside agencies prac- 
tically all cultural and educational training, thus weakening still 
further the bonds between parents and children. Where will 
this social tendency stop? Will it lead ultimately to the disinte- 
gration of the family as a social institution ? However, with all 
encroachments upon it, the family is still, and, I believe, will re- 
main the fundamental social institution. 

The use of boarding-houses and the establishment of homes 
in flats and family hotels mark a still further departure in the 
destruction of family unity. The boarding-house and the family 
hotel are abnormal institutions in which to develop family in- 
t^rity and strength. Their influence on the personality and 
training of the child is very questionable. In these institutions 
family unity and the welfare of children suffer without any 
apparent advantages. 

Family solidarity is better maintained in the country than in 
the city. In the country, children usually remain at home until 
they are of age. Many of the outside agencies above described 
are not present to weaken the influence of the home. In urban 
communities, social conditions are so diversified that new develop- 
ments must of necessity be sought. In the city it would seem 
that the hope of the children of the poor lies in the social settle- 
ment, the playground and the school. The condition of home life 
in the city, so far as the great masses are concerned, makes it im- 



19© THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

possible for the home to do the functions well of any of these 
agencies. Family solidarity must be maintained by both rich 
and poor alike, by an increased interest by parents in their chil- 
dren and in the training of the children. A very busy coll^;e 
man once told me that he had a schedule of one hour a day with 
his two boys which he always kept. "I want a chance at them" 
was his statement. 

No definite solution to the question proposed is attempted 
here. All we can do is to state the present tendencies and to point 
out the good and bad features in the development of the modem 
family. Living in large numbers in cities is a comparatively 
recent phenomenon and adaptation to city living is one of the 
great problems of the present. In the changes taking place it 
is inevitable that the family must change. 

Less attention to clubs and less interest in club life by par- 
ents, and more interest in their children should be a present-day 
demand. With the better education of both fathers and mothers, 
it will be easy for them to supplement the training of the school, 
the church, and the socialized' agencies. The state may provide 
better educational facilities than can the family, but state educa- 
tion, with its system and methods, must be supplemented by indi- 
vidual education by the parent. The development of personality 
needs individual influence and training and no one can give these 
things better than the parent. Persuasion must displace coercive 
authority, and, upon the whole, we will have better-trained, more 
cultured, more responsible young men and young women. 



Albion W. Small, The University of Chicago 

Professor Hagerty's valuable paper deserves thorough discussion. It 
seems to me, however, that, in the brief time at my disposal, I can do a 
better service by applying my remarks to our whole programme. 

As I review my own impressions from the discussions thus far. it seems 
to me that a stenographic report of everything that has been said would 
give the city editor of a yellow journal all the excuse such an imaginative 
gentleman usually requires in such cases for asserting that this Society 
regarded the American family as on trial, with the presiunption rather 
strongly against it 

I have no right to speak for the Society, but my version will have at 



INDIVIDUAUZATION OF MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY 191 

least as much claim to a hearing as the dty editor^s. My dictum is that 
the thing on trial is not the American family, but every condition which 
interferes with general realization of the American family in full fruit 
of its spirit 

At all events I want to go on record in protest against everything in 
our proceedings which would tend to justify substitution of the yellow 
journal version for mine. 

I do not believe I am phenomenally unsophisticated. It has been a good 
many years since I have heard of anything new in the way of sexual 
irregularity, except accidental variations of number and place. When I 
was a boy of ten, the nearest building to the school I attended was a brothel. 
More or less vitiated instruction about the meaning of the institution was 
the one thing I remember from the experiences of the school yard, and 
the stamp of those recollections is much more distinct on my mind than 
anything I heard from the teachers. 

I cannot pose as a reclaimed rake. I am obliged to admit that my 
knowledge of sexual vice is entirely third personal. Unless that is a 
disqualification, I have had fairly liberal means of reaching informed judg- 
ments about the role which irregular relations of the sexes plays in our 
American society. From that tenth year I do not remember a time, till 
I was twenty-five or thirty years old, when additions to my knowledge of 
the subject were not accumulating. Fortunately or unfortunately, I had 
such progressive instruction, from my own observation with that of others, 
that I can recall only one or two instances in which variations of sexual 
depravity overtook me with surprise. It has been more than twenty years 
since anything reported from official or unofficial social clinics has added, 
except in quantity, to what I was already perfectly familiar with in principle 
about abnormal relations between men and women. I do not believe, 
therefore, that I am expressing the reaction of a recluse in a fool's paradise. 

I do not deny the existence, in certain groups, of the prevalence of the 
evils that have been alleged or hinted at in some of the papers in our 
programme; I do deny most emphatically that those evils constitute in any 
considerable degree an indictment against the American family as an insti- 
tution. 

In the first place, the invidious inferences that have been suggested, 
more than uttered, by some of the essayists, get their supposed sanction 
from that delightfully simple mode of reasoning pc^ularly known as putting 
the cart before the horse. It amounts to this: Because the family is sinned 
against, therefore the family is the sinner. 

To this easy flippancy I would reply. Nothing that has been put in 
evidence proves anything very important against the American family. It 
merely proves that a large fraction of our population is more or less unfit 
for membership of a social group of that advanced type. 

In other words, as a rough general proposition, all the disturbed or 



192 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

destroyed families that we know anything about in the United States are 
effects of causes independent of the family type itself. Of course these 
disturbed or destroyed families become in turn aggravations of some of the 
evils from which they resulted, and breeders of other evils, but this is 
merely equivalent to saying that the family institution has not force enough 
to counterbalance all the demoralizing conditions of surrounding society, 
or to neutralize all the unsocial propensities of the undomesticated persons 
who compose it. 

In the second place, most of the point to most of the smart flings at the 
family is gained by manipulations of the evidence that are either ignorant 
or disingenuous. What I mean by that is this: The American family is out 
of gear in two strata, in both of which pretty much everything else is 
out of gear. On the one hand is the stratum of the over-wealthcd, over- 
leisured, over-stimulated, under-worked, under-controlled. Nothing in their 
conditions is normal. Nothing is right. Only miracles could save this stratum 
from rot. Its families necessarily show the taint, and what else could be 
expected? On the other hand is the stratum of the over-worked, under-fed, 
under-housed, under-clothed, under-hygiened, physically and morally, under- 
leisured, under-stimulated except by the elemental dteires. Nothing in their 
lot is right Nothing in their lot could be good enough to hold its own 
very securely against the swamping bad. The family suffers in the general 
evil. It is as absurd to accuse the family institution on that evidence as 
it would be to denounce the amosphere in general because the air this 
stratum has to breathe is foul. 

If we deduct the collapsed families in these two strata, where they must 
be regarded more as effects than as causes, and confine ourselves to the 
families that are in relatively normal conditions, the great mass of families 
in the industrious middle stratum of our society, the family is not breaking 
down. It is probably working at least as well as any other organ in our 
social structure. 

Not as proof, but as illustration, I may draw from my own experience. 
Five years excepted, I lived in the state of Maine until I was thirty-eight 
years old. The last eleven of those years I had to visit all parts of the 
state, and I had acquaintances, sometimes a considerable number, in nearly 
every town. During those thirty-eight years I knew by name only one 
family resident in the state that had been broken up by divorce. The state 
contained few people at that time rich enough to be outside the working 
class. It contained relatively few dependants who were not defectives. 
The great middle class contained here and there a divorce, but so rarely 
that most of the people knew them only as the average New Yorker knows 
of Navajo Indians. 

I do not mean to question the statistics of divorce. I mean first, that 
when we subtract the divorces that occur in the upper and lower non-social 
strata, and divide the number remaining by the number of families in the 



INDIVIDUAUZATION OF MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY 193 

substantial middle stratum, the percentage of divorces is higher than it 
ought to be, but far below the rate which d«cryers of the family would 
have us infer; and I mean, second, that the actual divorces in that stratum 
constitute no such case against the family institution as the same decryers 
want us to believe. 

In the third place, I want to point out the hysterical character of another 
line of innuendo against the family. Because Frenchmen are supposed to 
treat conjugal fidelity as a joke, because English tradition places the wife 
among the husband's assets, because normal family relations are impossible 
in abnormal conditions of irresponsible wealth or insuperable poverty, 
because John Smith occasionally finds himself married to the impossible Jane 
Jones instead of the possible Hannah Johnson, and because an occasional 
coupk that could not live with anybody try to live with each other, there- 
fore all the evils in all these conditions are counts against the normal 
American family! This sort of neurotics has not been silent in these 
sessions. 

It is not an uncommon thing for railers against the family to talk as 
though "the position of woman" in the United States were not merely 
like that of the wife under the common law tmtil recent decades, but 
substantially like that of the wife at Rome in the palmiest days of the 
patria potestas. On the other hand it is not uncommon for European 
visitors to speak out the impression that the American husband is simply 
the jaded beast of burden collecting the wherewithal for his wife and 
daughters to be physically, mentally, and morally dissipated. One of these 
exaggerations is as superficial as the other. The average animus of the 
American family is more nearly reflected by an incident that occurred at 
the University of Chicago the year of its foundation. Between the unre- 
claimed swamps and the temporary caravansaries crowding the available 
sites to shelter World's Fair visitors, the immigrant faculty families had 
a dismal outlook for abodes. Upon their gloomy contemplation of the 
prospect there suddenly dawned a vision of relief. It was in the shape of 
plans and specifications for a block of model houses. An architect and his 
wife, the latter furnishing the ideas and the arguments, the former the draw- 
ings, were the messengers of hope. The wife called a meeting of the 
professors, and showed how an available block near the University might 
be converted into lots for forty-five houses, with a club house in the center, 
to contain heating plant, laundry, servants' quarters, and restaurant, which 
the families could use at their pleasure, or the meals could be delivered by 
a miniature elevated electric rsulroad to each family which so preferred. 
There was a co-operative purchasing plan attached through which each 
family in the group could order supplies as liberally or frugally as it pleased, 
and pay for them at wholesale rates. 

Every man at the meeting pronounced the scheme ideal ; and I am unable 
to explain why they did not then and there put their signatures to contracts, 



194 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

and order building to begin next day — or at least the first forty-five of them 
to crowd their way to the front For some unrecorded reason it was 
decided to go through the formality of showing the plans to the wives of 
these exultant professors, before actually breaking grotmd. These supposed 
lilent partners in those families assembled next day. They examined the 
plans. They listened to the eloquence of their authors. They thought again 
of their homeless condition, and then they— decided with one voice that they 
would remain homeless all their days sooner than consign their children 
to the unknown evils of a common community back yard. That settled it. 
Many of those families have remained wanderers on the face of the earth 
till the present hour, simply because in the American family man proposes 
but woman still disposes. 

Seriously, it is worse than silly to talk as though the American family 
were a radically faulty institution. There will be a certain ratio of friction 
and frustration and waste, in every possible human association, so long as 
human beings lag this side of perfection. With our human nature as it 
is, there is no conceivable form of association in which men and women 
could be more helpful to each other and better i^aced to do their best for 
society, than in the form frankly filled by the spirit of the typical American 
family. 



James A. Field, The University of Chicago 

The question which we have to discuss is a very large question, and a 
very vague one. I shall confine what I may say to an attempt to make it 
less indefinite by suggesting one or two distinctions — by pointing out not an 
answer but a more specific problem to be solved. 

The original query which Professor Hagerty has considered in his 
paper — "How Far Should Members of the Family Be Individualized?" — 
includes within its scope at least two questions. If we assume the continued 
existence of the family substantially in its present form we may inquire 
how we should divide and adjust the functions of family life among the 
members of the family, and how far the members as individuals, and 
especially the man and the woman, should in their family relations be 
regarded as equal in responsibilities and rights and in all that they are to 
give and to gain. That is one of the questions, and that is the one which 
Professor Hagerty seems chiefly to have had in mind. The other, which 
challenges what was before assumed, is this: Is an increase of individualiza- 
tion consistent with the continued existence of present-day family life? 
Such an inquiry suggests Spencer's familiar antithesis of individuation and 
genesis. Briefly Professor Hagerty has alluded to this phase of the problem 
by mentioning the effect of the higher education of women upon marriage 
and the rearing of children — ^though it is by no means only through woman 
that the dictates of individual ambitions may disrupt the normal family 



INDIVIDUAUZATION OF MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY 195 

group. But I believe this second form of the question is too important to 
be so casually passed by. It demands attention if we but consider the real 
purport of further individualization. For, to the ordinary person, the 
thought of individual development means more than equivalence of privilege 
within the family. The individualization we strive for is an ideal indi- 
vidualization which means freedom in every way to develop and to do. It 
means achievement and a successful career. Consequently we must seek 
to see what distinction can be drawn between the standard of individual 
success and the qualification for parenthood. 

To command the esteem of others a person must first of all show 
affirmative characteristics. It is not enough to go through the world harm- 
lessly. We admire the person who takes the active attitude toward his 
surroundings and does things — who makes a mark that compels us to recog- 
nize him as a center of energy which he can direct as he chooses. Such 
masterfulness is admired even if it is exercised to the detriment of others; 
but to command genuine approbation it must serve the general advantage. 
Success, then, is essentially measured by the reward, in good or in good 
repute, given for positive acts of service. It comes as a sort of equivalent, 
in exchange. And here, as in other cases of exchange, it is easy to look 
too narrowly at the return and to miss the significance of what is given. 
So, in the effort to attain success, as success is judged, persons are led to 
excessive specialization and intensity of effort. This amounts to a process 
of self-exploitation, which, though it is destructive to those who thus 
overwork, seems to be acceptable to society, since the continual renewal of 
the stock by reproduction and the spread of ideas by imitation permit un- 
exhausted persons to take up the unfinished tasks where their predecessors 
were obliged to drop them. The pursuit of individual success, then, really 
often involves, as a response to the demands of others, the sacrifice of what 
may still be regarded as the normal individual life. 

The qualification for parenthood, on the other hand, is pre-eminently the 
even balance of abilities. The life of the specialist is ill-suited to parenthood, 
whichever of the functions of the parent we may emphasize. As the 
source of hereditary traits in the child, the parent should, so far as we can 
venture to decide, be all-sided, not one-sided. For the training and rearing 
of children unimpaired physical health is requisite. For the education of 
children in the home extreme specialists are not desirable unless we assume 
that the innate aptitudes of the child fit him for a special career which 
closely corresponds to the equipment of both his parents, and that such a 
career will be appropriate to future conditions as to past But this inquiry 
into the qualifications for parenthood, perplexed at best, need not be pushed 
far here. Whoever, by specialization, becomes a distortion of the normal 
biological type, may fairly be regarded as poorly equipped for the essentially 
biological function of maintaining the race. 

In the light of the distinction that has been suggested we may predict 



196 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY * 

either that our present view of the family relations must undergo extensive 
change or that the further progress of members of the family in individu- 
alization, as this is commonly understood, will sooner or later be limited 
by the necessity of maintaining the species. Assuming that the family is 
likely to retain essentially its present form, higher and higher specialization 
by individuals will take us toward the point at which the reproducing of the 
stock will cease and the generation which stands to benefit by the sacrifices 
of specialists will no longer exist to justify or encourage these sacrifices. 
Without being pessimistic or radical one may therefore suggest that if 
increasing individualization is not to become a cause for concern we should 
revise our standard of success until it is more in accord with the living 
of normal lives. 



Mrs. Anna Garun Spencer, New York City, N. Y. 

The question before us is too large and complex to be adequately dis- 
cussed in the time allotted. Certain points, however, deserve special mention. 
First, the modern, individualistic family, consisting of two persons only 
with their children, is still too new an experiment in social order for us to 
be certain about all its tendencies. The older civilizations were all built 
upon a family life in which the character and capacity of the two young 
parents were reinforced and disciplined by a collective or patriarchal family 
connection. If one husband could not care for the wife and children the 
men of the larger family circle must. If one mother was not equal to the 
demands of child-life, as then understood, the rest of the women of the 
family were enlisted. Now for the first time, so far as we know, a young 
man and a young woman are left to make their own marriage choices, and 
on the character and intelligence of these two young pe<^le is placed the 
heavy social responsibility of the success of that domestic venture. What 
wonder that where character is weak, industrial power limited, and social 
ideals undeveloped, the fathers "desert" when family cares prove unexpectedly 
heavy, and the mothers fail to keep their children alive because of the too 
great burden placed upon them? It seems to some of us that the patriarchal 
type of family with its support and control of the individual parents must 
have some sort of modem social substitute in order to make the modem type 
of family, of one father and mother and their children, more successful. It 
may be that motherhood will be seen to be such an important function that 
its protection against excessive labor, against poverty below point of health 
and child-bearing strength, and against immoral and degrading surroundings, 
may be considered a state duty. It may be that fatherhood will be seen to 
be such a high civic obligation, and of such vital importance to the common 
welfare, that its duties and sacrifices shall justly demand some public recog- 
nition in proportion to the social value of the service rendered. At any rate 
we should clearly recognize the fact that the modern type of family places 



INDIVIDUAUZATION OF MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY 197 

a unique and very heavy responsibility upon men and women in their youth 
and that it is not strange that many fail to bear it easily and well. Again 
the tremendous importance of the family life as an agent in the development 
of human personality should be clearly perceived by us. That mysterious 
quality or process which gathers universal elements of being into a unity of 
life which can be known as "you*' or "I," that which can be educated as a 
conscious and purposive creature able to react upon the environment which 
has shaped it and thus to create an ever-renewed environment — it is well 
for us to think how difficult a process it has been to develop this human 
personality. Think of the cosmic cost of will, of unselfish affection, of articu- 
late aspiration ! Think how the germinal human being passes rapidly through 
many of the age-long processes that have thus created human personality; 
and how many times Mother Nature makes a slip and the human creature 
becomes but an "unfinished infant" for all its life. And when the baby 
is fairly bom, think how difficult it is for it to keep its footing on this 
slippery ball and really "be somebody." This achievement of the, ages of 
evolution does not work automatically. Feeblemindedness, physical weakness 
and degeneracy, moral incapacity in manifold forms, witness that the cosmic 
struggle to make human beings out of the strain and stress of life is not 
completed for humanity but by humanity. Now the family is up to date 
proved the best and most effective aid in this process of developing person- 
ality. It has so far furnished a breakwater against the non-social forces 
that work against human development. And so far that breakwater has con- 
sisted in large part of exclusive affection, reserve of intimacy, and close 
personal ties between parents and children. The attempt to bring up children, 
(even a small class for a definite end, as in Sparta), outside of home life has 
not produced fine personality, although sometimes (as in Sparta) it has 
produced a few great soldiers. The methods of child care in even good insti- 
tutions generally result in dulled individuality even if the training for specific 
kinds of work is effective. The child seems to need as a "buffer" against 
the world at large a certainty that he is an essential element in the social 
order, such a certainty as seems seldom given except by the parental par- 
tiality of affection. 

Moreover, so far in human development, this function of the family in 
the protection and development of personality as it struggles toward expres- 
sion in the child has demanded that someone in the family shall have and 
express a type of individuality which is not primarily concerned with or 
dependent upon specialization of vocational work, but is rather devoted 
supremely to the family unity and to the varying wants of the family group. 
If children are to gather themselves together "out of the everywhere" it 
seems necessary that someone shall be close at hand when wanted and not 
leave "hours" and seasons when the child cannot get at anybody to whom it 
knows it belongs. So far in the organization of the family the mother has 
been the person so readily at hand when the child's needs, physical or spiritual. 



198 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

demanded the steadying influence of a companionship on which it felt a 
rightful claim. This has been thought to be a natural arrangement because 
the child was closest to the mother physically. But there is a deeper reason 
that underlies both that closer physical relationship and the function of the 
mother in the development of personality through constant companionship. 
Speaking generally, the feminine side of humanity is in "the middle of the 
road" of life. Biologically, psych Dlogically, and sociologically women are in 
the central, normal, conservative part of the evolutionary process. On the 
one side and on the other men produce more geniuses, and more feeble- 
minded; more talented experts, and more incompetents who cannot earn a 
living; more idealistic masters of thought and action, and more neer-do- 
weels who shame their mothers. It is because to woman is committed in a 
peculiar sense this function of development of personality in child-life that 
they are the practical, teaching half of the race. In the development of 
individuality it is most essential that the conserving weight of the middle 
virtues, and the mean of powers, should be nearest the child. It is later, 
in the more formal educational process, that the highly specialized "variants" 
which men exhibit, and which directly tend toward human progress on the 
one side and toward human degeneracy on the other side, have their func- 
tional use as example or as warning. 

All this has direct bearing upon our subject "How far should the mem- 
bers of the family be individualized?" We have removed from the single 
pair and their children all the props and discipline of the patriarchal family, 
and now we are rapidly democratizing the family. This has gone already so 
far that we are even afraid of controlling effectively our own children lest 
we check their growth toward self-government. The problems of modem 
education in respect to moral culture inhere in the fact that we have achieved 
high ideals of the sacredness of personality and the dignity of individual 
choice but as yet have not acquired pedagog^ical technique to work these into 
character-building. The democratizing of the family, certainly so far as its 
two adult heads are concerned, is, however, an absolutely essential step in 
human progress. It is essential especially for that process of making persons 
to which the family is devoted : for now we need not classes nor castes in the 
social order but free individuals to make a free and progressive state. It 
is therefore vital that both parents shall be of the stuff out of which the 
higher type of human creature is made, and such can only come from a demo- 
cratic home. The industrial changes, however, which have dominated all 
recent social movements, have introduced into the modern ideal of individu- 
ality an exaggerated demand for highly specialized vocational effort Men 
must do some one speciality effectively or they are not considered to achieve 
success in life. Women are more and more called by education and industrial 
life to work in the same specialized manner for some. definite end of personal 
achievement This has given a tendency among some leaders of women's 
industrial and educational progress to minimize the experience of mother- 



INDIVIDUAUZATION OF MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY 199 

hood, and to magnify the social value of the method of work that suits the 
prevailing machine-dominated industry. In so far as this tendency implies 
that motherhood may become a relatively small and rapidly finished task, one 
which will not interfere with a constant, lifelong pursuit of one speciality 
of vocation on the same terms as men do their one task, I deplore the tend- 
ency. That women should all be educated for self-support at a living wage is 
a social necessity ; that women should be economic factors now as they have 
always been in the past is also unquestionable; that women must reshape 
many of their activities to suit that general scheme of modem industry 
that has created the factory is certain; that women should for their own 
best good and for the general ends of social progress keep their hands on 
some specialty, so far as may be, through the years when they cannot follow 
it as the first obligation, so as to be ready to re-enter their vocation when 
the children are grown, this is coming to be seen more and more as the wise 
plan for all women who would do something worth while in life. But that 
the exigencies of family life can ever be reduced to a perfect system of 
specialties of work so as to place men and women on the same plane of 
competitive professional and manual labor, I do not believe. That the 
majority of women who marry and have children can be the best of mothers 
and at the same time be as constantly devoted to some particular pursuit 
as is the average man seems not to be in accordance with facts. There is, 
it seems clear to some of us looking below the surface, a deep sociological 
reason for this division of interests and activities in the lives of the majority 
of women. Personality is not the power to do a specific thing well, although 
vocational effectiveness is a part of personality; nor is it a capacity to excell 
all previous achievements of the human race in some one line of endeavor, 
although great persons may be geniuses of this sort. Personality is above 
all the quality of unity, some individual wholeness that prevents the human 
creature from wholly losing himself in the whirl of things. And to develop 
this in the average life it seems to be necessary that somewhere at the. child's 
first efforts to become a person there shall be some quiet brooding, much 
leisurely companionship of the beloved, a rich and generous sharing of 
some larger life always near when needed, and not so much absorbed in its 
own individual doings as to fail of noting each movement of another toward 
a truly human existence. For this reason the individualization of women 
within the family may be often subordinate, so far as vocational effort of 
the modern industrial type is concerned, to the development of a kind of 
personality which is effective through its breadth and its normal balance 
rather than by reason of its technical achievements. In any case the family 
as a prime factor in the development of personality is the chief concern of 
all social effort, and therefore the individualization of its members must 
be controlled by the law of its own supreme function. 



/ 200 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

I 

Carl E. Parry, University of Michigan 

The question of how far the members of the family should be indi- 
vidualized happens to touch upon a very fundamental question of social 
theory, namely, what is the individual? There is still much difference of 
opinion among sociological thinkers as to what an individual really is, and 
over the true relation between the individual and the social order. Perhaps 
it is a good thing for these questions of fundamental theory to come 
openly into our discussion, for it can well be maintained that good theory 
is the most practical thing in the world. Furthermore, it is quite possible 
that what laboratory training does toward making natural scientists becom- 
ingly modest, patient, and sane, can be done for us partly by our wrestling 
with questions of fundamental theory. 

What does it mean to ask how far the members of the family shbuld 
be individualized? Perhaps it means, especially, how far should wives, 
mothers, and children, be afforded opportunity for freedom of choice. In 
reality, of course, every individual must individualize himself, because the 
very essence of human individuality lies in independent judgment, personal, 
responsible, characteristic, and unique. How can one be a real individual if 
he does not make up his own mind and carry out his own plans, bearing and 
expecting to bear most of the consequences himself? All that other per- 
sons can do for him, through any kind of social action, is to furnish him 
with opportunity of some sort. What we are really enquiring into today, 
therefore, is not how far, but rather in what direction persons should be 
individualized — or better, how far unrestricted choice is consistent with 
their highest personal development, and by whom and in what respects the 
opportunity shall be afforded. Perhaps it will illustrate my meaning to 
suggest that it is no more individual for a woman of today to get a divorce 
under intolerable conditions than it was for the woman of yesterday to 
throw flatirons under similar provocation. And it is still a debated question 
between certain manufacturers ?nd social workers whether legislation 
limiting the hours of working-women is individualizing them or whether 
it is doing the exact opposite. Would one say that a woman lawyer is more 
individual than a mother? Or a criminal than a college president? The 
real question is between different kinds of individuality, as I said before, 
and different ways of realizing it If we have the right kind, it is hard 
to see how the members of the family can be too much individualized, 
so our question is answered at the very outset; but what is the right kind? 
It seems to me that all social effort is directed toward fostering strong and 
high individual personality, whatever that may be. If the range of choice 
for women and children has been recently extended, what we are most 
concerned to know is whether it has resulted, on the whole, in stronger and 
better personality or in degeneracy. Of course in judging in this matter 
we must have in mind some ideal. 



INDJVIDUAUZATJON OF MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY 20I 

It is not established that degeneracy has resulted from the larger 
opportunities afforded women. Probably there are more good wives and 
mothers, even, than there ever were before. When before were there so 
many mothers' clubs, so much interest in child-study, and so many periodicals 
relating to housekeeping? When before did mothers take so much interest 
in the education of their children? It is obvious that much depends on 
what we consider bad effects of enlarged opportunity. The principal speaker 
of the afternoon has said, "In the making of the home woman renders her 
greatest social service and finds her highest function." The same thing 
has often been said before. We can all agree with it, provided it does not 
imply too much. It should not imply that greater freedom of choice, provided 
it leads some women to choose not to make homes, is a misfortune. Such an 
implication would only beg the whole question. What we might better 
say is that some women, as some men, find their highest function in raising 
a creditable family, and that some women and some men find their highest 
function in doing something else that is socially useful, but that neither 
men nor women serve either themselves or others by choosing to do any- 
thing which they cannot do well, or which is narrowly selfish. There are 
some who seem to think that raising a family is a social service, rather 
deserving of reward, but nobody has been able to prove that raising a 
family with bad heredity or bad family training is anything other than a 
social disservice. All depends on how well one's work is done, and there 
are more ways of serving heaven and earth than are dreamed of in some 
men's philosophies. If a woman finds her chief field of self-expression, of 
individuality, in club life, or some other form of social service, who shall 
say that this particular woman was not better fitted for this kind of work 
than for motherhood? Who knows? And who can know? Only the most 
obviously injurious kinds of eccentricity can be safely set down as really 
bad, for the stone which is rejected of the builders may become the head 
of the corner. Some results of larger freedom for women have been 
certainly good, and a great many others we are not yet in a position to 
pronounce upon. 

When we come to discuss the freedom of choice afforded children, we 
must recognize that there are some limitations which a child cannot 
escape, simply because he is a child — because of his ignorance and inex- 
perience, and because he must grow up under the eye of whatever parents 
he may happen to have. In making the recurring choices which fix his habits, 
and so his character, he must rely upon his parents for almost constant 
guidance, for good or ill. Yet something can be done for him, and much 
has already been done for him. We try to enlarge the freedom of the 
child, for instance, by schools, child-labor laws, playgrounds, etc., and more 
recently and insistently by industrial education. These help the child, no 
doubt, but it is not established that the school has grown at the expense of 
the family, as Mr. Hagerty intimated. It is more nearly true to say that 



202 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

both the family and the school have expanded in function. One need only 
stop to reflect, for instance, to see that the child of working-class parents 
a few hundred years ago was not taught to read and write by the parents, 
instead of by the school; he simply was not taught to read and write at 
all. It became necessary as a new demand and was taken over by a new 
institution. And it is still more certain that the speaker was wrong in 
thinking that the church has grown at the expense of the family: the fact 
is that both have suffered by the decay in religious thought, feeling, and 
action. But however that may be, to come back to the question now 
immediately before us, more and more people are coming to sec that com- 
pulsory-school-attendance laws and laws against child labor go but a short 
way toward really enlarging a child's freedom of choice, invaluable though 
they are. They go no farther than to remove the ignorance and greed of 
his parents so far as these stand in the way of the child's being in the 
schoolroom or on the playground. They leave him still subject to the 
ignorance and greed and incapacity of the parents in a hundred other 
directions, such as in language, manners, foresight, industry, ideals of con- 
duct, etc., and they leave immediately untouched all the limitations upon 
his freedom of thought and action which flow from the poverty of the 
family, from its home and neighborhood surroundings of every kind. It 
is to remove some of these limitations that housing conditions, playgrounds, 
etc., are being looked after. Besides, a child may be in the schoolroom or 
upon the playground and yet be deformed, or sick, or unable to see well 
or to hear well, or he may be habitually underfed — all conditions preventing 
him from learning much or indulging much in strenuous* play, in which 
lies the building of character, the foundation of individuality. Here are 
limitations which challenge society to overcome them. 

To this end there are some current proposals of much interest. In 
addition to furnishing schools and playgrounds and industrial and house- 
hold and hygienic training, it is rjroposed by some to emancipate the child 
still further by furnishing free medical inspection and attention, and also 
furnishing free meals to school children, and possibly even shoes and 
clothing. Still more far-reaching is the proposal to give state aid, as by 
pensions, as a matter of right, to all mothers, from the first coming of 
their children.* In support of this last it is said that state pensions to 
mothers would set some of them free from the unreasonable domination 
of their husbands and also from the necessity to go from home to work 
in factories; the idea is that such freedom would permit women of the 
working-classes to develop a truer individuality, in caring for their chil- 
dren, than is now possible for them. Such pensions might also result in 
the children being rescued from neglect, thus coming into larger oppor- 
timity and perhaps using it to develop real individuality. All these are 

^See H. G. Wells, New Worlds for Old; also Socialism and the Family, 



INDIVIDUAUZATJON OP MEMBERS OP THE PAMILY 203 

important proposals. Some of them are already being adopted here and 
there. The distinctive thing about them is that they are directed toward 
enlarging freedom of choice by furnishing the economic means, instead 
of depending upon the father to fnmish them as has heretofore been 
done. To indicate where the line shall be drawn upon such methods of 
'"individualizing" the members of the family, in the lig^t of the best socio- 
logical theory, would seem to be one of the chief purposes of this dis- 
cussion. As I have not been able to mature my views on this matter I 
shall not attempt to answer the question. 

Those who attempt to answer it, however, must ask, in regard to all 
these proposals. What is likely to be their effect upon the standards of 
family relations? Will they raise and define the standard of what shall 
be considered by the average community a good husband, a good wife, a 
good father or mother? Will they lead to stronger and more effectual 
approval or disapproval, as the case may be, of large families, reckless 
marriages, neglect of wife or children, the indulgence of children by their 
parents? And will they lead to greater definition of standards in these and 
other respects? It is mostly in the light of their effects upon these standards, 
and thus upon the character of individual fathers and mothers, that these 
proposals must be judged. It is upon such a basis, it seems to me, that those 
who feel themselves competent must proceed in answering the question of 
how far such methods of ''individualizing" should be pursued. 

As to the general subject of the advantages of freedom of choice, it 
is only when there is some, but not too much responsibility felt by the 
person making the choice that the results are good. Increased knowledge 
of all kinds, including that as to human nature and the social order, increased 
foresight, including that into the social effects of this kind of conduct and 
that, such as the treatment of children, increased sense of responsibility for 
marriage, etc. — ^in these, of course, lies the hope of the future. But there is 
nothing very startling or sensational about this, I am very glad to say. All 
moral effort of everybody — ^teachers, preachers, social workers, business men, 
upright citizens — fostering any of these ends just mentioned will foster the 
true individualization of members of the family. 



Dr. Mauuce Parmelee, New Yokk City, N. Y. 

Professor Hagerty deplores the breaking-up of family solidarity. But, 
as he himself recognizes, this has been the historical tendency. The early 
clan and patriarchal organization was based upon the principle of kinship. 
Since then the basis of social organization has been widening constantly. 
It is, therefore, not safe to assume that the breaking-up of family solidarity 
is necessarily an evil. On the contrary, if family solidarity is broken up it 
may )>e superseded by a larger social solidarity which will more than com- 
pensate for its loss. 



204 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

I have no far-reaching generalizations as to the future of the family to 
propose, nor am I so certain as Professor Hagerty that the family wiU 
remain the fundamental social institution. I shall therefore limit myself to 
speaking of a few of the numerous factors which enter into the family life 
to lessen its value for the members of the family and especially for the 
children. It has been my good fortune to have the opportunity of studying 
the careers of several hundreds of criminals and in the case of many of 
these I have been able to determine what factors there were in their early 
family surroundings which helped to start them on criminal careers. These 
same factors serve in the case of many other individuals to make their 
careers more or less unsuccessful though not necessarily criminal These 
factors may be classified in two groups, the first, abnormal, the second, 
normal By abnormal factors I mean those which enter into the family life 
through accidental means and therefore cannot be foreseen and are unusual 
By normal factors I mean those which enter habitually into the lives of 
many families because they arise out of conditions which are now widespread 
in society. 

Among the abnormal factors are the following: The presence of a 
step-parent in the home lessens very greatly the value of the family life for 
the children because a step-parent cannot have the same affection for the 
children that the real parent has. A step-mother is likely to do roost harm 
to young step-children. Though lacking maternal love for these children 
yet there are imposed upon her the duties of a mother which she is very 
likely to neglect. She is especially likely to do this if she has children of 
her own, when her feeling of indifference toward her step-children may 
become dislike and hatred. A step-father is most likely to do harm to older 
step-children, especially a boy verging on manhood. Then a step-father is 
liable to feci that this son of a former husband of his wife is an intruder 
in his home and this feeling is a prolific cause for dissension. 

Incompatibility of temperament between the parents tends to make the 
family life unwholesome for the children. Dissension between the parents 
weakens their authority over the children and without parental restraint 
the children are likely to run wild. In many immigrant families there comes 
a break between parents and children because the children become Ameri- 
canized more rapidly than their parents. The knowledge of English and of 
American customs and ways which the children get so quickly in the public 
schools and elsewhere gives them a sense of superiority over thetr parents 
and makes the parents quite helpless to exercise any authority over them. 

In some families undue restrictions are laid upon the children because 
the moral and conventional standards of the parents are more rigid than 
those of the surrounding community. This may account for the proverbially 
bad character of the minister's son. These restrictions are usually upon 
certain pleasures which the religious or moral prejudices of the parents 
consider bad. Such restrictions are especially aggravating when these pleas- 



INDIVIDUAUZATION OF MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY 205 

ures are countenanced in the vicinity of the home. The time comes when 
the pent-up desires and energies of the child force him or her to break 
loose. Frequently the first move is to run away from home. 

The principal normal factors which lessen the value of the family life 
are poverty, and ignorance, which is frequently the result of poverty but 
sometimes its cause. Poverty frequently causes privation of the necessities 
of life for some or all the members of the family. It causes a lack of 
recreational facilities for the children. When the mother has to go out 
to work it removes restraint from the children at home. Ignorance both in 
poor and in well-to-do families leads to failure on the part of the parents 
to feed, clothe, and bring up the children properly. 

Society should be ready to step in whenever possible and supply the 
want when the family fails. The principal social agencies for this purpose 
are the public schools, children's aid societies, the probation system, etc. 
Society can supply the want quite frequently when the abnormal factors 
we have mentioned above enter into the family life, but very little can be 
done to eliminate these abnormal factors. It can help quite frequently also 
when the normal factors mentioned above enter into the family. But it 
should be the ultimate object of society to eliminate poverty and ignorance. 
The accomplishment of this, however, may not strengthen the family, for 
the guarantee of well-being which society will then make may be to the 
individual member of society rather than to the family as a unit. In that 
case family solidarity will be superseded by a larger social solidarity. 



Concluding Remarks of Professor Hagerty 

At the outset the question stated was: How far should the state go in 
individualizing members of the family? The secretary in submitting the 
subject to me changed it to its present form: How far should the members 
of the family be individualized? The paper which I read is a discussion of 
the latter question, which is considered from the view-point of public opinion 
or the social judgment as well as that of state action. 

The writer of the paper labored under the impression that those who 
were to lead in its discussion were as familiar with the meaning of the sub- 
ject, as interpreted by the makers of the programme, as he was. On this 
account an interpretation of the subject was omitted from the paper. If 
those who discussed the subject had comprehended its intended meaning 
much that has been said in this discussion would have been omitted. Under 
the circumstances the writer franlly admits his error in not interpreting 
the subject without agreeing, however, with much that was said by those 
who have commented on the necessity for definition of terms. 

I dissent entirely from Mr. Parry's criticism of the statement in the 
paper that "in the household, in the making of the home, woman renders 
her greatest social service and finds her highest function." I admit with 



2o6 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

him that some women should not marry and that they can be more useful 
to themselves and to society by abstaining from marriage and by engaging 
in pursuits suited to their talents. This admission, however, in no wise con- 
flicts with the contention that women as a class render their greatest social 
service and find their highest ftmctions in the development of homes and 
in the keeping of homes. 

Mrs. Gilman protests against the citation of the failure of the orphanage 
as indicating the superiority of the home as the normal and proper institution 
in which children should grow up. While the orphanage deals with an 
inferior class from the point of view of heredity, when these children are 
placed in homes, the home deals with precisely the same class securing 
much better results than the orphanage. Besides, the orphanage frequently 
has the advantage of expert talent in organizing the work of the institution 
and also expert talent in training the children. 

In spite of these features it is a failure. No other method of rearing 
children has ever been known which is comparable to home training in the 
development of efficient and useful citizens. 

In institutions organized to reform juvenile delinquents, the cottage 
system, where the conditions of home life are as far as possible reproduced, 
furnishes the ideal institution. The smaller the cottage and the fewer the 
number of children in the cottage making possible imitation of family 
life, the better is the institution. 



HOW FAR SHOULD FAMILY WEALTH BE ENCOUR- 
AGED AND CONSERVED? 



GEORGE K. HOLMES 
U. S« Department of Agriculture 



It is understood that this question refers to the encourage- 
ment of the accumulation of wealth by the family and to its 
security, by means of efforts exerted outside of the family — indi- 
vidual efforts, the efforts of associations of individuals, and even 
of the state. 

Hence the discussion seems to invite an examination of some 
fundamental principles of economics, of politics, and ultimately 
of biology. Anything of this sort is too large a proposition for 
this paper, and the endeavor will be mostly to follow lines along 
which we may not be radically at odds, even though some of us 
may be state socialists and others individualists and still others 
occupying various positions between the two extremes. 

Why should a family want wealth beyond what is merely 
sufficient to provide for necessities and comforts ? What is called 
civilization answers the question. There is a minimum standard 
of living of varying descriptions which, society insists, should be 
maintained, and this not solely for the betterment of the indi- 
vidual as an individual, nor mostly so, but for his betterment as 
a member of society and because of the general social elevation 
in civilization promoted by that of the individual. So society 
has a legitimate interest in the welfare of every member and in 
raising the standard of living. Family income, and wealth, too, 
are closely related to its welfare. 

DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 

In this country, family wealth exists on a high general level, 
yet inequalities of wealth-distribution are enormous. It seems 
probable that one-half of the families are almost without wealth, 
their possessions being mostly confined to household and personal 
belongings and the implements required by their occupations. 

907 



2o8 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

Among the 19,000,000 families there are millions whose property 
of the descriptions indicated is worth less than $500, and some 
millions of these, worth less than $200. That is wealth, not 
income. 

Fifteen years ago, favored by exceptional opportunities for 
exploring the subject of wealth-distribution in ownership, the 
writer ventured to indicate its character in arithmetical terms. 
In the meantime great changes have taken place — ^the multiplica- 
tion and increase of great fortunes, the accumulation of minor 
fortunes so common as to fail to attract attention; and, at the 
other extreme, increasing tenancy of the home, both on the farm 
and in the town and city, and the continued building-up of the 
great class of low-wage receivers. 

Between these two extremes, another class has been building, 
what is called the middle class, containing about one-half of the 
total number of families, and among these the farmers have 
gained conspicuously. Since 1890 the value of farm capital, 
including land value, has increased 75 per cent., a gain of three- 
fourths in 18 years, partly due, however, to extension of culti- 
vated area by new farms. 

What the resultant fact of all these diverse movements of the 
last 18 years upon the character of wealth-distribution is can 
only be inferred, but it seems probable that inequality has in- 
creased. The reference is not to the increased gap between the 
very poor and the very rich, but to inequality, mathematically 
expressed so as to measure the effect of the acquisition of say 
$10,000,000 by one family, and the acquisition of the same 
amount by 2,000 families at $5,000 each. 

It is probably not the growth of large fortunes alone that has 
caused the increasing inequality of wealth distribution, for there 
is some indication of a larger hopelessly poor class. We may 
differ as to the reasons for the existence of this class, but at 
any rate we shall have to consider among the causes environment, 
occupation, heredity, and many social efforts to preserve the unfit 
and enable them to continue their kind. 

So it seems probable that the writer's old statement of wealth- 
distribution made for the conditions of 1890 would not make the 



FAMILY WEALTH 209 

case worse than it is if applied to the present time. The state- 
ment was that 

about 19 per cent of the wealth is owned by the poorer families that own 
farms and homes without incumbrance, and that these are 28 per cent 
of all of the families. Only 8 per cent of the wealth is owned by tenant 
families and the poorer class of those that own their farms and homes 
under incumbrance, and these together constitute 63 per cent, of all families. 
As little as 4 per cent, of the nation's wealth is owned by 52 per cent of the 
families, that is, by the tenants alone. Finally, 4,047 families possess about 
seven-tenths as much as do 11,560,293 families. 

The purpose in quoting this is to call attention to the large 
fraction of the families that are poor, really poor; it is about 
one-half. It is still to be remembered that the subject is wealth, 
not income. 

The probate statistics of Massachusetts afford further light 
on distribution. If the estates are classified according to amount 
and the classes are arranged in order of amount in columns, the 
number of estates and the total amount of wealth in each class, 
some interesting observations can be made. 

The distribution tended to become more even from 1830 to 
i860, but more tmeven from i860 to 1890. Analysis localizes 
this feature. At the extremes of the scale — in the poor and in 
the rich — the distribution becomes more uneven. On the con- 
trary, within the middle class, distribution becomes more even. 

Any general plan to encourage family wealth would en- 
cotmter a situation, it would seem, in which wealth-distribution 
is becoming more tmeven and in which there is an ample quantity 
of material to work upon. In one of the richest states, Massa- 
chusetts, the inventoried probated estates valued at less than 
$500 are 15 per cent, of the total and those valued at less than 
$1,000 are 27 per cent. ; while, in the whole United States, per- 
haps one-half of the families may be r^^rded as poor in accumu- 
lated wealth. 

CAUSES OF THIS DISTRIBUTION 

Some understanding of the causes of the present deficient 
distribution of wealth and of the large fractions of the poor and 
very poor, may guide our efforts to encourage family wealth, or 
possibly prevent some of them. Wealth is accumulated out of 



2IO THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

wealth produced, primarily in the division of the product between 
labor and capital, and subsequently in the transfer of this wealth 
from one place and person to another. The process of wealth- 
accimiulation works mostly in favor of the capitalist If the 
woricing-man accumulates much wealth, it is because he has be- 
come also a capitalist and mostly because of returns to his capital, 
either in interest, or rent paid by real-estate tenants, or in un- 
earned increment to land value, or in pure profit. 

Years ago the New York Tribune ascertained the sources of 
the fortunes of all of the reputed millionaires of this country. 
The results were unavoidably imperfect, but after all they 
roughly indicated the facts. Over 4 per cent, of the millionaires 
became such through logging and lumbering, nearly 7 per cent, 
through mining, and 65 per cent., more or less through increase 
of land value. All instances in which there is a trace of labor 
as a source of wealth, and these are confined to the professional 
kinds, may be segregated. They form but 3 per cent, of the 
total and in all cases the accumulation out of salaries and fees is 
qualified by the explanation that these were invested in real 
estate or other property returning interest and pure profit. 

It is possible for a skilled mechanic with wife but no chil- 
dren, abstaining from alcoholic liquors and tobacco and nearly 
all unproductive expenditures, to accumulate in twenty-five years 
of good health, unremitting industry, parsimony, and compound- 
ing of interest on savings, enough income-returning property to 
sustain his widow in comfort This is possible, because it has 
been done, but the man who did it was a marked man, and he had 
no children, either to render his feat impossible or to preserve 
his characteristics for future social good. 

Savings banks are often referred to in popular writings as 
having deposits composed entirely or mostly of the savings of 
working-people and of the poor. This is a wide-spread fallacy 
in a large degree. The Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of 
Labor, years ago, investigated this subject to ascertain the extent 
to which working-people were taking advantage of savings insti- 
tutions, but these people were conspicuously few. 

Although working-people may constitute a considerable frac- 



FAMILY WEALTH 21 1 

tion of depositors, their aggr^^te deposits are comparatively 
small and the fact is that these banks are more properly invest- 
ment institutions than savings banks. A man could be mentioned 
who had $2,000 in each of twenty savings banks in Massa- 
chusetts, and his case was exceptional only in degree. These 
banks did for him what they did for nearly all depositors — ^they 
performed solely the function of an expert investment agent. 

Wealth is unevenly distributed because, partly, savings out 
of wages and salaries play a very small part indeed in comparison 
with savings out of returns to capital. Then why do not wage 
and salary receivers strive to build up an income-retiuning capi- 
tal? The answer may be given in many forms— circumstances, 
psychology, defective heredity, public opinion and policy, restrict- 
ive, repressive, or subdivided competition, and the social atmos- 
phere. 

As we in this country live and as we are agreed that we should 
live, there is little to be had out of wages and salaries for con- 
version into income-bearing capital, if a man has wife and chil- 
dren to provide for. The wage-earner is subject to causes that 
weaken his saving power, both in periods of industrial depression 
and in times called prosperous. In times of depression he suffers 
for want of employment and in times of great activity in produc- 
tion, cost of living has increased in a greater degree than wages 
have. There is a popular inversion of this latter fact due to a 
misunderstanding of the annual reports of the United States 
Bureau of Labor concerning wages and retail prices of food. 

From 1890 to the latest year, the Bureau has established a 
series of index numbers standing for relative weddv wage-earn- 
ings per employee, and another series representing relative retail 
prices of food, weighted according^ to family consumption. 

Then, another series of index numbers has been computed to 
merge the former two into one; that is, to express the purchasing 
power of full-time weekly earnings per employee measured by 
retail prices of food weighted according to family consumption. 
This series of combined index numbers is the decisive one in the 
matter of wages and cost of food, but it is doubtful that it has 
attracted the attention of one newspaper writer throughout the 



ai2 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

length and breadth of the land, and the result is that there is a 
general misrepresentation of this conclusion of the Bureau of 
Labor. 

The fact is this : The purchasing power of wage-earnings in 
terms of food from 1890 to 1907 was lowest in 1893, in May of 
which year a long and severe industrial depression burst upon the 
country. The purchasing power increased during the period of 
depression and was highest in 1896, the last year of tht depres- 
sion, and next to the highest in the following year, since which 
time there was decrease, with oscillations. 

The general fact established is that the purchasing power of 
wage-earnings in terms of food-consumption was on a higher 
level in the so-called prosperous times of 1897 to 1907 than in the 
similar sort of times in 1890 to 1892 ; but also that the working- 
man's earnings bought more food in the period of depression 
from 1895 to 1897 than in the preceding fat years for capital; 
and, again, in the years 1896 and 1897 bought more food than 
m the penods of great expansion that followed. 

It clearly appears that wage-rates are less responsive to 
elevating and depressing influences than food-prices are. 

If the Bureau of Labor's index numbers of weekly wage-earn- 
ings are computed into purchasing power of all commodities 
as shown by Bradstreet's index numbers, the results are of the 
same sort as those above mentioned, but more boldly expressed 
than when applied to the prices of food alone. 

In the case of all commodities, the purchasing power of wages 
is conspicuously high in the period of low industrial activity from 
1894 to 1898 and decidedly low in the following years of ex- 
pansion. 

The time when productive capital "makes monejr" is when 
prices rise faster than wages do ; the favorable time for wage and 
salary earners and persons with fixed or nearly fixed incomes is 
the period of depression, except in so far as want of employment 
may reduce wage-earnings. 

Attention should be directed to an apparent exception in recent 
years in the case of the wages of farm labor. There seems to 
be small mobility and less versatility in the labor of the city man ; 



FAMILY WEALTH 213 

but the country man will go to the city and turn his hand to 
almost anything. If he does not become a conductor on a street 
car, he will prepare to become the president of the company in 
a few years ; he will operate a delivery wagon, or become a mer- 
chant, or a telephone lineman, or a banker, and so on with a long 
list of occupations. The demand for labor in town and city, in- 
creasing from 1897 at an apparent g^in over country labor in real 
wage-earnings, although not properly so in fact since they were 
only wage-rates, tended to deplete the country of agricultural 
labor, and the consequent increase of farm wages was greater in 
degree than the increase in the prices of all commodities. From 
1895 to 1906 these prices increased 35.8 per cent, while the 
wages of farm labor by the month for the year or season without 
board increased 38.4 per cent, and with board 41.4 per cent; 
wages by the day in harvest without board increased 46.5 per 
cent and with board 55.4 per cent ; and the wages of ordinary 
labor by the day without board increased 55.6 per cent and with 
board 61.3 per cent The prices of all commodities increased only 
35.8 per cent 

The examination of the causes of low wealth-accumulation by 
the many may be continued. There is occupation. In 1900, 
twenty-nine million persons had gainful occupations and a very 
large fraction of these had occupations of low productivity of 
wealth or of small personal or professional service — at any rate 
regarded as low or small on pay day. There were over four and 
one-half million agricultural laborers, 112,000 clergymen, nearly 
half a million teachers, nearly three million undescribed laborers, 
386,000 persons doing work of washerwomen, more than one 
and one-half million servants; many soldiers, sailors, and ma- 
rines, boatmen, hostlers, messengers, porters, and so on; and 
more than half a million dressmakers and seamstresses, nearly 
two-thirds of a million clerks and copyists, and about the same 
number of salesmen and saleswomen. 

The unskilled, and poorly remunerative, occupations gave 
employment to probably more than one-half of all persons having 
gainful occupations. 

What fraction of the persons having gainful occupations shall 



214 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

be assigned to those who are employed under wages or salary? 
Years ago, the writer worked at this question for all censuses 
in which occupations were sufficiently described, and it seems 
probable that the fraction of the employed is increasing. 

The question was subsequently propounded to a statistical 
office in Washington several years ago and a man very competent 
to answer the question arrived at a percentage differing by about 
3 and he did not know that the writer had worked on the prob- 
lem. The conclusions were 65 and 68 per cent. ; that is to say, 
these are the wage and salary receivers. 

Analyze the population of all ages and observe how small a 
fraction is fitted or disposed, or is in a position, to accvunulate 
wealth after maintaining a family and the required standard of 
living. The negroes are 11.6 per cent, the foreign-bom whites 
13.5 per cent, the native white females 36.7 per cent., and the 
native white males under 30 years of age, 25.2 per cent Of 
course there is no sweepng generalization that all of these classes 
cannot be and are not wealth-accumulators in some degree. 

After an allowance of one-half of i per cent for Mongolians 
and Indians, there remains the chief wealth-acquiring class — the 
native white males 30 years old and over who constitute only 
12.5 per cent of the population ; and how many of these must be 
rejected as even possible wealth-accumulators ? 

Still further may be considered the subject of the obstacles to 
wealth-accumulation. Bradstreet's agency has a record of the 
failures among nearly a million and a half persons, firms, and 
corporations engaged in business in the United States. Fronx 
1899 to 1907, the mean percentage of annual failure was 0.78 
of I per cent. ; somewhat under i in each 100 is the yearly busi- 
ness death-rate. 

Unfitness of various descriptions accounts for most of the 
failures — incompetence for 23 per cent, of them in 1907, inex- 
perience for s per cent., lack of capital for 37 per cent., unwise 
credits for 2 per cent., extravagance for i per cent., neglect for 
2j^ per cent., •speculation for i per cent., and fraud for 10 per 
cent. In all, more than four-fifths of the failures were because 
the responsible persons were not qualified to manage and con- 



FAMILY WEALTH 215 

serve the capital employed; and yet 90 per cent, of the failures 
had a capital of less than $5,000. 

There are social elements not qualified, or not disposed, to 
produce enough wealth to afford any surplus as a family posses- 
sion, or if qualified and favorably disposed to produce the wealth, 
not disposed to save a surplus away from consumption and 
expenditure. There is the army of the lazy, another army of the 
mentally incapable, and the many with criminal natures, the sick, 
weak, and deformed, the degenerates, the atavists, and the spend- 
thrifts. It requires a mighty good inheritance to enable a man 
to subordinate present satisfactions to future good and greater 
future satisfactions; and so income disappears in present con- 
sumption. 

The wastefulness of our people is a world-wide byword. We 
have been supplied so prodigally that habits of economy and 
saving have not been forced upon us. To the Chinese we must 
seem to have taken hardly our first lesson in getting the greatest 
utility out of things. All this is destructive to saving out of 
income. 

A cord of wood delivered in a cellar in Washington costs $8, 
and the same cord delivered in little bundles in the kitchen, one at 
a time, costs $20. As an untried proposition, the cord would 
cost only two-fifths of the bundles, but upon trying it there will 
often be found an unexpected factor. When buying by the cord 
and having an abundance of wood on hand, it is burned unneces- 
sarily and so wastefully that two and one-half cords will not last 
as long as one cord delivered by the little bundle. 

Two pounds of sugar in a single purchase may last as long 
as five pounds do in kitchen experience. An exhibition of a 
plentiful supply of butter, soap, and other things will incite the 
cook and laundress to a riot of waste. 

These are illustrations of a widespread and prevalent waste, 
found not only among servants, but perhaps among your next 
friends. 

So it is often found that the most economical way to live in 
affairs of the kitchen, where about one-half of the working-man's 
income is consumed, is the costly one of small purchases at the 



^l6 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

highest prices, instead of large quantities at wholesale prices. 
Experience of a similar general nature with a wide range of 
application is very common in American life. 

Now, take the families that are able to accumulate some 
wealth for investment. How many of them in lOO can invest 
it so as to keep it from getting away? And how many, or better 
how few, are competent to use their savings as productive capital 
and conserve it? The fractions of the competent in these cases 
are small. A majority of men can work for others better than 
for themselves; only exceedingly small fractions are organizers 
and managers even on a small scale. 

A few words must be said about income, or there may be some 
false impressions derived from what has been said about wealth- 
distribution and the large element of the poor. A family may 
be poor — that is, have little or no wealth but personal and house- 
hold belongings and the implements of occupation — ^and btill have 
a good-sized income. The family may prefer to raise the level 
of its living and expense to the height of the income rather than 
to keep the living and expense down and let a surplus remain for 
building up the stock of family wealth. This is the favorite 
policy in the United States. The preference is to raise high the 
standard of living and expense and let the comparatively few 
provide the nation's capital. 

So when we observe the general appearance of well-being 
throughout the land, the inference is that wealth is well dis- 
tributed; and, on the other hand, when we are confronted with 
the probable distribution in fact, we are horrified at the dreadful 
condition of humanity that it is assumed to indicate. 

It is time to put the brakes on our unproductive consumption. 
Much of this is of no benefit to the family and some of it is detri- 
mental. This topic needs considerable time for its treatment 
and only a general protest can be entered here. With a reduc- 
tion of this sort of consumption, there would be available for 
building up the family wealth, a portion of family income that 
is now practically wasted. 



FAMILY WEALTH 217 

ENCOURAGEMENT 

From whence shall a family get its encouragement? Shall 
it be from the state? Shall the state treat the family as a child, 
enforce saving, invest its wealth, guarantee the deposits, establish 
postal savings banks, the solvency of which will be protected by 
the wealth of the nation ? These questions need not be answered 
in the affirmative until great social necessity requires such an- 
swers, and need not receive consideration at all until self-help, 
with neighborly encouragement, has failed. 

In the meantime degrading conditions should receive atten- 
tion. Not from the point of view of social welfare, but from that 
of social preservation, it may be demanded of the state that it 
shall remove such conditions. This is justification of such l^is- 
lation as that for improving tenement houses and the conditions 
of labor in them. 

There are many things that we cannot do, or at any rate, will 
not undertake to do, unless associated with others. By means of 
co-operation the building and loan association provides loans to 
its members and at the same time stimulates family savings. Co- 
operative investment of capital in small contributions by many 
persons will establish and sustain a co-operative store, or a co- 
operative laundry, or a co-operative coal yard, or a co-operative 
printing office, or a co-operative milk-buying and delivery service. 
The field for economic co-operation is very large, and it may be 
carried on in many directions. 

Co-operation has been enormously developed by farmers in 
this country and successfully established, and it is working in 
favor of accumulating the wealth of farmers' families and of 
conserving it. The magnitude of this movement deserves some 
words, because of the demonstrations that it presents. Eight or 
nine years ago, there were obtained from 35,000 crop corre- 
spondents of the United States Department of Agriculture, repre- 
senting all of the townships of the country, the names of the 
farmers' co-operative economic organizations, and afterward 
statements of their business were obtained. One who has kept 
in touch with this co-operative movement of the farmers during 
the intervening years may risk the statements that follow. 



2i8 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

Farmers' economic co-operation in the United States has 
developed enormously, and it is safe to say that at the present 
time more than one-half of the 6,100,000 farms are represented 
in economic co-operation; the fraction is much larger if it is 
based on the total number of medium and better sorts of farmers, 
to which the co-operators mostly belong. 

The most prominent object of co-operation is property insur- 
ance, in which about 2,000 associations have probably 2,000,000 
members. This kind of insurance costs the farmers only a few 
cents per hundred dollars of risk above the actual losses. 

The co-operative creameries number more than 1,900, and the 
cheese factories about 260, the membership of the two classes 
being very large and representing an immense number of cows. 

With the exception of insurance, the greatest success in the 
farmers' co-operative movement is in selling. Associations to 
regulate, promote, and manage the details of selling the products 
of co-operating farmers are found in all parts of the United 
States. There is co-operation for selling by fruit growers, v^e- 
table growers, nut growers, berry growers ; by live-stock men, by 
the producers of cotton and tobacco, wheat, sweet potatoes, flax, 
oats, ^gs, poultry, and honey. Farmers co-operate to sell milk 
for city suppy, to sell wool, cantaloupes, celery, cauliflower, citrus 
fruits, apples, and so on with a long list. 

Co-operative buying is conducted by about 350 stores in this 
country, a majority of which are mostly owned by farmers. This 
is chiefly the result of a very recent movement Another form 
of co-operation for buying is based on the discount plan, as 
carried on by the granges, farmers* clubs, and various other asso- 
ciations of farmers with co-operative buying as either a primary 
or secondary object. Things bought in this way are all sorts of 
store goods: potatoes, wheat, etc., for seed; coal and wood; and 
a great variety of farm and family supplies. 

Warehousing is conducted by farmers on the co-operative 
plan with success, particularly for the storage of wheat and com. 
A co-operative cotton-warehousing movement is of recent date. 

Co-operative telephone service has permeated vast r^ons, 



FAMILY WEALTH 219 

and the do-operative feature has kept the expense at the lowest 
figure, both of equipment and of service. 

Co-operative irrigation is carried on by many thousands of 
associations in the arid and semi-arid regions, and there is co- 
operative drainage for reclaiming swamp land. 

The progress of farmers in forming and expanding associa- 
tions of an educational and semi-economic character has made 
great advances. These associations are national in their scope, 
or are confined to state lines or to sections within states, and are 
devoted to the interchange of ideas and experiences, the assem- 
bling of information for common benefit, the holding of competi- 
tive exhibitions of products, the devising of plans for the conmion 
good, and business of a like character; and are concerned with 
special subjects, such as horticulture, floriculture, dairying, plant 
breeding, live-stock breeding, poultry breeding, the scientific 
aspects of breeding, forestry, agricultural education, fraternal 
association with incidental educational and economic features, 
seed-breeding, agriculture, vegetable-growing under glass, and 
the nursery business. 

Important associations of the social sort, with incidental eco- 
nomic features, are farmers' clubs, of which there are a great 
many. 

Altogether the number of farmers' co-operative economic 
associations must be fully 75,000, and may easily be many more, 
with a membership rising above 3,000,000, without counting 
duplicates. 

Contrary to his reputation, the farmer is a great organizer 
and he has achieved remarkable and enormous successes in many 
lines of economic co-operation in which the people of other occu- 
pations have made no beginning. 

Economic co-<^ration is a feasible proposition in scores of 
directions, each of them making at least a small demand for 
wealth-saving and offering opportunity for investment. If you 
are engaged in encouragement, you do not wait for fellow-co- 
operators to come to you, but you go to them and so you are 
incidentally doing missionary work along lines suggested by the 



220 THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 

question now under discussion. You may be sure that the co- 
operator in the successful association will not let go. 

The highest form of social co-operation is the voluntary sort. 
All co-operators are willing, and not a minority of them unwilling 
as in politico-economic co-operation. Another thing in its favor 
is that it reacts upon its members to enlarge, or at any rate to 
strengthen, their individuality. It is a scheme for promoting 
both socialism and individualism, and it leaves and preserves the 
largest degree of liberty consistent with the social compact. 

In the work of encouraging family wealth, as in other matters, 
co-operation is selective. Only the suitable ones can become 
co-operators and remain such. The unsuitable ones will not 
respond to suggestion and offers of help. 

The writer was spending the summer on a farm in Virginia 
a few years ago, the guest of the owner of 250 acres. 150 of 
which were nominally improved, and producing a gross return 
of only $3 or $4 per acre. Partly because it was painful to be- 
hold such poor agriculture, and partly from friendly feelings, 
the services of some of the most talented practical agriculturists 
in the United States were enlisted to direct the farmer. They 
promised a gross return of say $75 per acre within five years 
upon the adoption of their plans, and no doubt their promise was 
good, but the farmer neglected to accept the offer. He was one 
of the unimprovable incompetents, irresponsive to social stimulus. 

If efforts in behalf of such a farmer or in behalf of your 
neighbor, to encourage him to add to his family wealth by sug- 
gestion, by offer of opportunity, by invitation to co-operate with 
you and others, are unfavorably received, let that end the matter. 
Nothing further can be done, unless the state takes charge of hiir. 
If it does, the state, and not he, will practically be the saver and 
conserver; and neither Spencer's nor Weismann's theory of 
heredity perceives in such procedure the creation of a trans- 
missible habit of saving. 



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