X. UNION HOUSE

X. UNION HOUSE

"We are weak!" said the Sticks, and men broke them; "We are weak!" said the Threads, and were torn; Till new thoughts came and they spoke them; Till the Fagot and the Rope were born.

For the Fagot men find is resistant, And they anchor on the Rope's taut length; Even grasshoppers combined, Are a force, the farmers find-- In union there is strength.

Ross Warden endured his grocery business; strove with it, toiled at it, concentrated his scientific mind on alien tasks of financial calculation and practical psychology, but he liked it no better. He had no interest in business, no desire to make money, no skill in salesmanship.

But there were five mouths at home; sweet affectionate feminine mouths no doubt, but requiring food. Also two in the kitchen, wider, and requiring more food. And there were five backs at home to be covered, to use the absurd metaphor--as if all one needed for clothing was a four foot patch. The amount and quality of the covering was an unceasing surprise to Ross, and he did not do justice to the fact that his womenfolk really saved a good deal by doing their own sewing.

In his heart he longed always to be free of the whole hated load of tradesmanship. Continually his thoughts went back to the hope of selling out the business and buying a ranch.

"I could make it keep us, anyhow," he would plan to himself; "and I could get at that guinea pig idea. Or maybe hens would do." He had a theory of his own, or a personal test of his own, rather, which he wished to apply to a well known theory. It would take some years to work it out, and a great many fine pigs, and be of no possible value financially. "I'll do it sometime," he always concluded; which was cold comfort.

His real grief at losing the companionship of the girl he loved, was made more bitter by a total lack of sympathy with her aims, even if she achieved them--in which he had no confidence. He had no power to change his course, and tried not to be unpleasant about it, but he had to express his feelings now and then.

"Are you coming back to me?" he wrote. "How con you bear to give so much pain to everyone who loves you? Is your wonderful salary worth more to you than being here with your mother--with me? How can you say you love me--and ruin both our lives like this? I cannot come to see you--I would not come to see you--calling at the back door! Finding the girl I love in a cap and apron! Can you not see it is wrong, utterly wrong, all this mad escapade of yours? Suppose you do make a thousand dollars a year--I shall never touch your money--you know that. I cannot even offer you a home, except with my family, and I know how you feel about that; I do not blame you.

"But I am as stubborn as you are, dear girl; I will not live on my wife's money--you will not live in my mother's house--and we are drifting apart. It is not that I care less for you dear, or at all for anyone else, but this is slow death--that's all."

Mrs. Warden wrote now and then and expatiated on the sufferings of her son, and his failing strength under the unnatural strain, till Diantha grew to dread her letters more than any pain she knew. Fortunately they came seldom.

Her own family was much impressed by the thousand dollars, and found the occupation of housekeeper a long way more tolerable than that of house-maid, a distinction which made Diantha smile rather bitterly. Even her father wrote to her once, suggesting that if she chose to invest her salary according to his advice he could double it for her in a year, maybe treble it, in Belgian hares.

"They'd double and treble fast enough!" she admitted to herself; but she wrote as pleasant a letter as she could, declining his proposition.

Her mother seemed stronger, and became more sympathetic as the months passed. Large affairs always appealed to her more than small ones, and she offered valuable suggestions as to the account keeping of the big house. They all assumed that she was permanently settled in this well paid position, and she made no confidences. But all summer long she planned and read and studied out her progressive schemes, and strengthened her hold among the working women.

Laundress after laundress she studied personally and tested professionally, finding a general level of mediocrity, till finally she hit upon a melancholy Dane--a big rawboned red-faced woman--whose husband had been a miller, but was hurt about the head so that he was no longer able to earn his living. The huge fellow was docile, quiet, and endlessly strong, but needed constant supervision.

"He'll do anything you tell him, Miss, and do it well; but then he'll sit and dream about it--I can't leave him at all. But he'll take the clothes if I give him a paper with directions, and come right back." Poor Mrs. Thorald wiped her eyes, and went on with her swift ironing.

Diantha offered her the position of laundress at Union House, with two rooms for their own, over the laundry. "There'll be work for him, too," she said. "We need a man there. He can do a deal of the heavier work--be porter you know. I can't offer him very much, but it will help some."

Mrs. Thorald accepted for both, and considered Diantha as a special providence.

There was to be cook, and two capable second maids. The work of the house must be done thoroughly well, Diantha determined; "and the food's got to be good--or the girls wont stay." After much consideration she selected one Julianna, a "person of color," for her kitchen: not the jovial and sloppy personage usually figuring in this character, but a tall, angular, and somewhat cynical woman, a misanthrope in fact, with a small son. For men she had no respect whatever, but conceded a grudging admiration to Mr. Thorald as "the usefullest biddablest male person" she had ever seen. She also extended special sympathy to Mrs. Thorald on account of her peculiar burden, and the Swedish woman had no antipathy to her color, and seemed to take a melancholy pleasure in Julianna's caustic speeches.

Diantha offered her the place, boy and all. "He can be 'bell boy' and help you in the kitchen, too. Can't you, Hector?" Hector rolled large adoring eyes at her, but said nothing. His mother accepted the proposition, but without enthusiasm. "I can't keep no eye on him, Miss, if I'm cookin' an less'n you keep your eye on him they's no work to be got out'n any kind o' boy."

"What is your last name, Julianna?" Diantha asked her.

"I suppose, as a matter o' fac' its de name of de last nigger I married," she replied. "Dere was several of 'em, all havin' different names, and to tell you de truf Mis' Bell, I got clean mixed amongst 'em. But Julianna's my name--world without end amen."

So Diantha had to waive her theories about the surnames of servants in this case.

"Did they all die?" she asked with polite sympathy.

"No'm, dey didn't none of 'em die--worse luck."

"I'm afraid you have seen much trouble, Julianna," she continued sympathetically; "They deserted you, I suppose?"

Julianna laid her long spoon upon the table and stood up with great gravity. "No'm," she said again, "dey didn't none of 'em desert me on no occasion. I divorced 'em."

Marital difficulties in bulk were beyond Diantha's comprehension, and she dropped the subject.

Union House opened in the autumn. The vanished pepper trees were dim with dust in Orchardina streets as the long rainless summer drew to a close; but the social atmosphere fairly sparkled with new interest. Those who had not been away chattered eagerly with those who had, and both with the incoming tide of winter visitors.

"That girl of Mrs. Porne's has started her housekeeping shop!"

"That 'Miss Bell' has got Mrs. Weatherstone fairly infatuated with her crazy schemes."

"Do you know that Bell girl has actually taken Union House? Going to make a Girl's Club of it!"

"Did you ever hear of such a thing! Diantha Bell's really going to try to run her absurd undertaking right here in Orchardina!"

They did not know that the young captain of industry had deliberately chosen Orchardina as her starting point on account of the special conditions. The even climate was favorable to "going out by the day," or the delivery of meals, the number of wealthy residents gave opportunity for catering on a large scale; the crowding tourists and health seekers made a market for all manner of transient service and cooked food, and the constant lack of sufficient or capable servants forced the people into an unwilling consideration of any plan of domestic assistance.

In a year's deliberate effort Diantha had acquainted herself with the rank and file of the town's housemaids and day workers, and picked her assistants carefully. She had studied the local conditions thoroughly, and knew her ground. A big faded building that used to be "the Hotel' in Orchardina's infant days, standing, awkward and dingy on a site too valuable for a house lot and not yet saleable as a business block, was the working base.

A half year with Mrs. Weatherstone gave her $500 in cash, besides the $100 she had saved at Mrs. Porne's; and Mrs. Weatherstone's cheerfully offered backing gave her credit.

"I hate to let you," said Diantha, "I want to do it all myself."

"You are a painfully perfect person, Miss Bell," said her last employer, pleasantly, "but you have ceased to be my housekeeper and I hope you will continue to be my friend. As a friend I claim the privilege of being disagreeable. If you have a fault it is conceit. Immovable Colossal Conceit! And Obstinacy!"

"Is that all?" asked Diantha.

"It's all I've found--so far," gaily retorted Mrs. Weatherstone. "Don't you see, child, that you can't afford to wait? You have reasons for hastening, you know. I don't doubt you could, in a series of years, work up this business all stark alone. I have every confidence in those qualities I have mentioned! But what's the use? You'll need credit for groceries and furniture. I am profoundly interested in this business. I am more than willing to advance a little capital, or to ensure your credit. A man would have sense enough to take me up at once."

"I believe you are right," Diantha reluctantly agreed. "And you shan't lose by it!"

Her friends were acutely interested in her progress, and showed it in practical ways. The New Woman's Club furnished five families of patrons for the regular service of cooked food, which soon grew, with satisfaction, to a dozen or so, varying from time to time. The many families with invalids, and lonely invalids without families, were glad to avail themselves of the special delicacies furnished at Union House. Picnickers found it easier to buy Diantha's marvelous sandwiches than to spend golden morning hours in putting up inferior ones at home; and many who cooked for themselves, or kept servants, were glad to profit by this outside source on Sunday evenings and "days out."

There was opposition too; both the natural resistance of inertia and prejudice, and the active malignity of Mrs. Thaddler.

The Pornes were sympathetic and anxious.

"That place'll cost her all of $10,000 a year, with those twenty-five to feed, and they only pay $4.50 a week--I know that!" said Mr. Porne.

"It does look impossible," his wife agreed, "but such is my faith in Diantha Bell I'd back her against Rockefeller!"

Mrs. Weatherstone was not alarmed at all. "If she should fail--which I don't for a moment expect--it wont ruin me," she told Isabel. "And if she succeeds, as I firmly believe she will, why, I'd be willing to risk almost anything to prove Mrs. Thaddler in the wrong."

Mrs. Thaddler was making herself rather disagreeable. She used what power she had to cry down the undertaking, and was so actively malevolent that her husband was moved to covert opposition. He never argued with his wife--she was easily ahead of him in that art, and, if it came to recriminations, had certain controvertible charges to make against him, which mode him angrily silent. He was convinced in a dim way that her ruthless domineering spirit, and the sheer malice she often showed, were more evil things than his own bad habits; and that even in their domestic relation her behavior really caused him more pain and discomfort than he caused her; but he could not convince her of it, naturally.

"That Diantha Bell is a fine girl," he said to himself. "A damn fine girl, and as straight as a string!"

There had crept out, through the quenchless leak of servants talk, a varicolored version of the incident of Mathew and the transom; and the town had grown so warm for that young gentleman that he had gone to Alaska suddenly, to cool off, as it were. His Grandmother, finding Mrs. Thaddler invincible with this new weapon, and what she had so long regarded as her home now visibly Mrs. Weatherstone's, had retired in regal dignity to her old Philadelphia establishment, where she upheld the standard of decorum against the weakening habits of a deteriorated world, for many years.

As Mr. Thaddler thought of this sweeping victory, he chuckled for the hundredth time. "She ought to make good, and she will. Something's got to be done about it," said he.

Diantha had never liked Mr. Thaddler; she did not like that kind of man in general, nor his manner toward her in particular. Moreover he was the husband of Mrs. Thaddler. She did not know that he was still the largest owner in the town's best grocery store, and when that store offered her special terms for her exclusive trade, she accepted the proposition thankfully.

She told Ross about it, as a matter well within his knowledge, if not his liking, and he was mildly interested. "I am much alarmed at this new venture," he wrote, "but you must get your experience. I wish I could save you. As to the groceries, those are wholesale rates, nearly; they'll make enough on it. Yours is a large order you see, and steady."

When she opened her "Business Men's Lunch" Mr. Thaddler had a still better opportunity. He had a reputation as a high flyer, and had really intended to sacrifice himself on the altar of friendship by patronizing and praising this "undertaking" at any cost to his palate; but no sacrifice was needed.

Diantha's group of day workers had their early breakfast and departed, taking each her neat lunch-pail,--they ate nothing of their employers;--and both kitchen and dining room would have stood idle till supper time. But the young manager knew she must work her plant for all it was worth, and speedily opened the dining room with the side entrance as a "Caffeteria," with the larger one as a sort of meeting place; papers and magazines on the tables.

From the counter you took what you liked, and seated yourself, and your friends, at one of the many small tables or in the flat-armed chairs in the big room, or on the broad piazza; and as this gave good food, cheapness, a chance for a comfortable seat and talk and a smoke, if one had time, it was largely patronized.

Mr. Thaddler, as an experienced bon vivant, despised sandwiches. "Picnicky makeshifts" he called them,--"railroad rations"--"bread and leavings," and when he saw these piles on piles of sandwiches, listed only as "No. 1," "No. 2" "No. 3," and so on, his benevolent intention wavered. But he pulled himself together and took a plateful, assorted.

"Come on, Porne," he said, "we'll play it's a Sunday school picnic," and he drew himself a cup of coffee, finding hot milk, cream and sugar crystals at hand. "I never saw a cheap joint where you could fix it yourself, before," he said,--and suspiciously tasted the mixture.

"By jing! That's coffee!" he cried in surprise. "There's no scum on the milk, and the cream's cream!" Five cents! She won't get rich on this."

Then he applied himself to his "No. 1" sandwich, and his determined expression gave way to one of pleasure. "Why that's bread--real bread! I believe she made it herself!"

She did in truth,--she and Julianna with Hector as general assistant. The big oven was filled several times every morning: the fresh rolls disappeared at breakfast and supper, the fresh bread was packed in the lunch pails, and the stale bread was even now melting away in large bites behind the smiling mouths and mustaches of many men. Perfect bread, excellent butter, and "What's the filling I'd like to know?" More than one inquiring-minded patron split his sandwich to add sight to taste, but few could be sure of the flavorsome contents, fatless, gritless, smooth and even, covering the entire surface, the last mouthful as perfect as the first. Some were familiar, some new, all were delicious.

The six sandwiches were five cents, the cup of coffee five, and the little "drop cakes," sweet and spicy, were two for five. Every man spent fifteen cents, some of them more; and many took away small cakes in paper bags, if there were any left.

"I don't see how you can do it, and make a profit," urged Mr. Eltwood, making a pastorial call. "They are so good you know!"

Diantha smiled cheerfully. "That's because all your ideas are based on what we call 'domestic economy,' which is domestic waste. I buy in large quantities at wholesale rates, and my cook with her little helper, the two maids, and my own share of the work, of course, provides for the lot. Of course one has to know how."

"Whenever did you find--or did you create?--those heavenly sandwiches?" he asked.

"I have to thank my laundress for part of that success," she said. "She's a Dane, and it appears that the Danes are so fond of sandwiches that, in large establishments, they have a 'sandwich kitchen' to prepare them. It is quite a bit of work, but they are good and inexpensive. There is no limit to the variety."

As a matter of fact this lunch business paid well, and led to larger things.

The girl's methods were simple and so organized as to make one hand wash the other. Her house had some twenty-odd bedrooms, full accommodations for kitchen and laundry work on a large scale, big dining, dancing, and reception rooms, and broad shady piazzas on the sides. Its position on a corner near the business part of the little city, and at the foot of the hill crowned with so many millionaires and near millionaires as could get land there, offered many advantages, and every one was taken.

The main part of the undertaking was a House Worker's Union; a group of thirty girls, picked and trained. These, previously working out as servants, had received six dollars a week "and found." They now worked an agreed number of hours, were paid on a basis by the hour or day, and "found" themselves. Each had her own room, and the broad porches and ball room were theirs, except when engaged for dances and meetings of one sort and another.

It was a stirring year's work, hard but exciting, and the only difficulty which really worried Diantha was the same that worried the average housewife--the accounts.

"THE OUTER REEF!"

(A Picture by Paul Dougherty.)

Who dares paint daylight? The bright white light of flaming noon? No blur of shadow, mist or haze, Just the whole unobstructed blaze Of hot mid-June.

No screen of leafage; The keen clean green of summer sea; Dazzle of surf in mid-day light, The very sound of the surges' fight, Broad--open--free.

The earth all stillness, Noon hush on the pastures' height; Turf topped cliffs with faces bare, Bones of the earth unveiled to air, Heat--breakers--light.

OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN~MADE WORLD

X.

LAW AND GOVERNMENT.

It is easy to assume that men are naturally the lawmakers and law-enforcers, under the plain historic fact that they have been such since the beginning of the patriarchate.

Back of law lies custom and tradition. Back of government lies the correlative activity of any organized group. What group-insects and group-animals evolve unconsciously and fulfill by their social instincts, we evolve consciously and fulfill by arbitrary systems called laws and governments. In this, as in all other fields of our action, we must discriminate between the humanness of the function in process of development, and the influence of the male or female upon it. Quite apart from what they may like or dislike as sexes, from their differing tastes and faculties, lies the much larger field of human progress, in which they equally participate.

On this plane the evolution of law and government proceeds somewhat as follows:--The early woman-centered group organized on maternal lines of common love and service. The early combinations of men were first a grouped predacity--organized hunting; then a grouped belligerency,--organized warfare.

By special development some minds are able to perceive the need of certain lines of conduct over others, and to make this clear to their fellows; whereby, gradually, our higher social nature establishes rules and precedents to which we personally agree to submit. The process of social development is one of progressive co-ordination.

From independent individual action for individual ends, up to interdependent social action for social ends we slowly move; the "devil" in the play being the old Ego, which has to be harmonized with the new social spirit. This social process, like all others, having been in masculine hands, we may find in it the same marks of one-sided Specialization so visible in our previous studies.

The coersive attitude is essentially male. In the ceaseless age-old struggle of sex combat he developed the desire to overcome, which is always stimulated by resistance; and in this later historic period of his supremacy, he further developed the habit of dominance and mastery. We may instance the contrast between the conduct of a man when "in love" and while courting; in which period he falls into the natural position of his sex towards the other--namely, that of a wooer; and his behavior when, with marriage, they enter the, artificial relation of the master male and servile female. His "instinct of dominance" does not assert itself during the earlier period, which was a million times longer than the latter; it only appears in the more modern and arbitrary relation.

Among other animals monogamous union is not accompanied by any such discordant and unnatural features. However recent as this habit is when considered biologically, it is as old as civilization when we consider it historically: quite old enough to be a serious force. Under its pressure we see the legal systems and forms of government slowly evolving, the general human growth always heavily perverted by the special masculine influence. First we find the mere force of custom governing us, the mores of the ancient people. Then comes the gradual appearance of authority, from the purely natural leadership of the best hunter or fighter up through the unnatural mastery of the patriarch, owning and governing his wives, children, slaves and cattle, and making such rules and regulations as pleased him.

Our laws as we support them now are slow, wasteful, cumbrous systems, which require a special caste to interpret and another to enforce; wherein the average citizen knows nothing of the law, and cares only to evade it when he can, obey it when he must. In the household, that stunted, crippled rudiment of the matriarchate, where alone we can find what is left of the natural influence of woman, the laws and government, so far as she is responsible for them, are fairly simple, and bear visible relation to the common good, which relation is clearly and persistently taught.

In the larger household of city and state the educational part of the law is grievously neglected. It makes no allowance for ignorance. If a man breaks a law of which he never heard he is not excused therefore; the penalty rolls on just the same. Fancy a mother making solemn rules and regulations for her family, telling the children nothing about them, and then punishing them when they disobeyed the unknown laws!

The use of force is natural to the male; while as a human being he must needs legislate somewhat in the interests of the community, as a male being he sees no necessity for other enforcement than by penalty. To violently oppose, to fight, to trample to the earth, to triumph in loud bellowings of savage joy,--these are the primitive male instincts; and the perfectly natural social instinct which leads to peaceful persuasion, to education, to an easy harmony of action, are contemptuously ranked as "feminine," or as "philanthropic,"--which is almost as bad. "Men need stronger measures" they say proudly. Yes, but four-fifths of the world are women and children!

As a matter of fact the woman, the mother, is the first co-ordinator, legislator, administrator and executive. From the guarding and guidance of her cubs and kittens up to the longer, larger management of human youth, she is the first to consider group interests and co-relate them.

As a father the male grows to share in these original feminine functions, and with us, fatherhood having become socialized while motherhood has not, he does the best he can, alone, to do the world's mother-work in his father way.

In study of any long established human custom it is very difficult to see it clearly and dispassionately. Our minds are heavily loaded with precedent, with race-custom, with the iron weight called authority. These heavy forces reach their most perfect expression in the absolutely masculine field of warfare. The absolute authority; the brainless, voiceless obedience; the relentless penalty. Here we have male coercion at its height; law and government wholly arbitrary. The result is as might be expected, a fine machine of destruction. But destruction is not a human process--merely a male process of eliminating the unfit.

The female process is to select the fit; her elimination is negative and painless.

Greater than either is the human process, to develop fitness.

Men are at present far more human than women. Alone upon their self-seized thrones they have carried as best they might the burdens of the state; and the history of law and government shows them as changing slowly but irresistably in the direction of social improvement.

The ancient kings were the joyous apotheosis of masculinity. Power and Pride were theirs; Limitless Display; Boundless Self-indulgence; Irresistable Authority. Slaves and courtiers bowed before them, subjects obeyed them, captive women filled their harems. But the day of the masculine monarchy is passing, and the day of the human democracy is coming in. In a Democracy Law and Government both change. Laws are no longer imposed on the people by one above them, but are evolved from the people themselves. How absurd that the people should not be educated in the laws they make; that the trailing remnants of blind submission should still becloud their minds and make them bow down patiently under the absurd pressure of outgrown tradition!

Democratic government is no longer an exercise of arbitrary authority from one above, but is an organization for public service of the people themselves--or will be when it is really attained.

In this change government ceases to be compulsion, and becomes agreement; law ceases to be authority and becomes co-ordination. When we learn the rules of whist or chess we do not obey them because we fear to be punished if we don't, but because we want to play the game. The rules of human conduct are for our own happiness and service--any child can see that. Every child will see it when laws are simplified, based on sociology, and taught in schools. A child of ten should be considered grossly uneducated who could not rewrite the main features of the laws of his country, state, and city; and those laws should be so simple in their principles that a child of ten could understand them.

Teacher: "What is a tax?"

Child: "A tax is the money we agree to pay to keep up our common advantages."

Teacher: "Why do we all pay taxes?"

Child: "Because the country belongs to all of us, and we must all pay our share to keep it up."

Teacher: "In what proportion do we pay taxes?"

Child: "In proportion to how much money we have." (Sotto voce: "Of course!")

Teacher: "What is it to evade taxes?"

Child: "It is treason." (Sotto voce: "And a dirty mean trick.")

In masculine administration of the laws we may follow the instinctive love of battle down through the custom of "trial by combat"--only recently outgrown, to our present method, where each contending party hires a champion to represent him, and these fight it out in a wordy war, with tricks and devices of complex ingenuity, enjoying this kind of struggle as they enjoy all other kinds.

It is the old masculine spirit of government as authority which is so slow in adapting itself to the democratic idea of government as service. That it should be a representative government they grasp, but representative of what? of the common will, they say; the will of the majority;--never thinking that it is the common good, the common welfare, that government should represent.

It is the inextricable masculinity in our idea of government which so revolts at the idea of women as voters. "To govern:" that means to boss, to control, to have authority; and that only, to most minds. They cannot bear to think of the woman as having control over even their own affairs; to control is masculine, they assume. Seeing only self-interest as a natural impulse, and the ruling powers of the state as a sort of umpire, an authority to preserve the rules of the game while men fight it out forever; they see in a democracy merely a wider range of self interest, and a wider, freer field to fight in.

The law dictates the rules, the government enforces them, but the main business of life, hitherto, has been esteemed as one long fierce struggle; each man seeking for himself. To deliberately legislate for the service of all the people, to use the government as the main engine of that service, is a new process, wholly human, and difficult of development under an androcentric culture.

Furthermore they put forth those naively androcentric protests,--women cannot fight, and in case their laws were resisted by men they could not enforce them,--therefore they should not vote!

What they do not so plainly say, but very strongly think, is that women should not share the loot which to their minds is so large a part of politics.

Here we may trace clearly the social heredity of male government.

Fix clearly in your mind the first head-ship of man--the leader of the pack as it were--the Chief Hunter. Then the second head-ship, the Chief Fighter. Then the third head-ship, the Chief of the Family. Then the long line of Chiefs and Captains, Warlords and Landlords, Rulers and Kings.

The Hunter hunted for prey, and got it. The Fighter enriched himself with the spoils of the vanquished. The Patriarch lived on the labor of women and slaves. All down the ages, from frank piracy and robbery to the measured toll of tribute, ransom and indemnity, we see the same natural instinct of the hunter and fighter. In his hands the government is a thing to sap and wreck, to live on. It is his essential impulse to want something very much; to struggle and fight for it; to take all he can get.

Set against this the giving love that comes with motherhood; the endless service that comes of motherhood; the peaceful administration in the interest of the family that comes of motherhood. We prate much of the family as the unit of the state. If it is--why not run the state on that basis? Government by women, so far as it is influenced by their sex, would be influenced by motherhood; and that would mean care, nurture, provision, education. We have to go far down the scale for any instance of organized motherhood, but we do find it in the hymenoptera; in the overflowing industry, prosperity, peace and loving service of the ant-hill and bee-hive. These are the most highly socialized types of life, next to ours, and they are feminine types.

We as human beings have a far higher form of association, with further issues than mere wealth and propagation of the species. In this human process we should never forget that men are far more advanced than women, at present. Because of their humanness has come all the noble growth of civilization, in spite of their maleness.

As human beings both male and female stand alike useful and honorable, and should in our government be alike used and honored; but as creatures of sex, the female is fitter than the male for administration of constructive social interests. The change in governmental processes which marks our times is a change in principle. Two great movements convulse the world to-day, the woman's movement and the labor movement. Each regards the other as of less moment than itself. Both are parts of the same world-process.

We are entering upon a period of social consciousness. Whereas so far almost all of us have seen life only as individuals, and have regarded the growing strength and riches of the social body as merely so much the more to fatten on; now we are beginning to take an intelligent interest in our social nature, to understand it a little, and to begin to feel the vast increase of happiness and power that comes of real Human Life.

In this change of systems a government which consisted only of prohibition and commands; of tax collecting and making war; is rapidly giving way to a system which intelligently manages our common interests, which is a growing and improving method of universal service. Here the socialist is perfectly right in his vision of the economic welfare to be assured by the socialization of industry, though that is but part of the new development; and the individualist who opposes socialism, crying loudly for the advantage of "free competition" is but voicing the spirit of the predacious male.

So with the opposers to the suffrage of women. They represent, whether men or women, the male viewpoint. They see the woman only as a female, utterly absorbed in feminine functions, belittled and ignored as her long tutelage has made her; and they see the man as he sees himself, the sole master of human affairs for as long as we have historic record.

This, fortunately, is not long. We can now see back of the period of his supremacy, and are beginning to see beyond it. We are well under way already in a higher stage of social development, conscious, well-organized, wisely managed, in which the laws shall be simple and founded on constructive principles instead of being a set of ring-regulations within which people may fight as they will; and in which the government shall be recognized in its full use; not only the sternly dominant father, and the wisely servicable mother, but the real union of all people to sanely and economically manage their affairs.

COMMENT AND REVIEW

There is a fine article in the June Popular Science Monthly, by Dr. Thomas W. Salmon on "Two Preventable Causes of Insanity."

He shows how much has been done by the popular recognition of cause and effect in checking tuberculosis, malaria and yellow fever, and urges a similar awakening in regard to insanity. At the close of 1908 there were 30,456 patients in the public and private institutions for the insane in New York State, about one in 280 of the general population of the state, he says; and then gives the new admissions for that year as 5,301. Five thousand new lunatics a year is a good many.

Dr. Salmon then shows that of this number there were "664 cases of general paralysis (dependant on syphilis) and 638 cases of alcoholic psychoses (due to intemperance)," or more than one-fourth of all first admissions due to these two preventable causes. There is a further most interesting fact, that this general paralysis in men is nearly three times as great in cities as in the country, and in women, twice as great; while alcoholic psychosis in women is seven times as great in cities.

Most striking of all is Dr. Salmon's showing that "42 per cent. of all male admissions from cities were for general paralysis and the alcoholic psychoses." As he justly remarks, "Where are 'the nervous tension of the cities' and 'the mad rush of modern life,' of which we speak so glibly, compared with syphilis and drunkenness as the real dangers of city life?" But for these two causes the ratio of insanity would be greater in the country, where, as is well known, the largest percentage of women lunatics comes from the lonely farm house.

Further than this we are told that many other forms of lunacy are indirectly due to syphilis and alcoholism, through parental transmission.

Knowledge is power. Society is but just awakening to a conscious knowledge of itself, its pains and pleasures, and its powers. One man may not be strong enough to resist the influences which pull and push him into these large hells, but when society as a whole,--or even women as a half,--waken to a realization of all this needless suffering, this dreadful waste, then we can prevent it.

*

The gentlemen of France are distressed about the birthrate. It appears that the men of that country do not bear enough children to keep up the population as they desire. Therefore serious measures are proposed "to stimulate the birthrate." They are these:

Additional military service to be imposed on bachelors over twenty-nine.

Marriage to be made obligatory to gentlemen employed by the state, at the age of twenty-five, with supplementary salaries and pension allowances for more than three children.

The law requiring equal distribution of estates among children to be repealed. The dislike of Frenchmen to dividing their property is a frequent cause of restricted families, we are told.

We trust that the gentlemen of France, spurred and encouraged by these incentives, will now produce more children than they have hitherto.

The New York Times, of Friday, June 24, gives an editorial to this news from France,--and no wonder. But it is perfectly serious in its treatment, and offers no criticism of the measures proposed. The writer has apparently small know]edge of biology, for he expresses astonishment that the miserably poor "increase prodigiously" in Russia and elsewhere. "Who shall solve these mysteries or dogmatize upon them?" he says, and speculates further, in a vaguely awe-stricken manner, on the subject, quoting from the vigorous Mr. Roosevelt and the gloomy Dr. Koch.

Do any of our readers, belonging to the negligible side of this race problem see anything to smile at? Let us parallel it:

There is dismay in the poultry yard over a grave falling off in the supply of eggs. A convocation of roosters is called to discuss it, and to take measures to remedy the condition. They propose (a) To make all roosters over six months old do extra scratching for food. (b) To enforce matrimony--or its gallinaceous equivalent--on all roosters employed by the flock. (c) To alter the custom of dividing the worms equally among the chicks.

The simile is strained, we admit: try to apply it to some other case, as a shortage in the milk supply--considered by a convocation of bulls. That seems rather absurd too. Can not some one suggest a parallel which could be taken as seriously as the Times takes this effort on the part of Frenchmen?

*

People in general, peaceably minding their own business, do not give much thought to their subtler enemies. A burglar, creeping in through the window, we can see and scream at; but a Public Poisoner, a whole array of Public Poisoners, creeping through the Legislature, we do not notice.

In the interests of the common good we have our National Health League, working by means of the Owen Bill for a National Department of Health which shall safeguard the people from disease and contamination as the Bureau of Agriculture safeguards our cattle.

Against this measure, one of most needed social service, is rising an organized opposition called the "League for Medical Freedom." This association defends the free practice of healing by unorthodox methods, but its opposition to the Owen Bill is wholly ignorant, if not worse. The Owen Bill, in urging a National Department of Health, does not seek to regulate the practice of medicine. Its work will be to maintain pure food, pure drugs, pure streams, and to study human health and maintain it as assiduously as we now study the health of swine and steers.

This sudden opposition, using great sums of money to advertise in the newspapers, seems based on the big interests of the patent medicines and other profitable health destroyers and life takers.

Our women, within their capacity as mothers and guardians of the home, ought to inform themselves as to the work of the National Health League.

Write to the Committee of One Hundred, Drawer 45 New Haven, Conn.

*

How many of our readers know that superb magazine, The Englishwoman?*

As far as I have seen them it is by far the finest woman's publication in the world. A big, handsome, dignified monthly; 120 pages in large clear type, a joy to the eye; and paper, a joy to the hand; the magazine is three-quarters of an inch thick to The Century's half inch, and weighs ten ounces to The Century's 18. This is not only because there are no pictures, but because of that specially light weight paper, so much more used in England than with us.

Thus pleasing to the eye and to the hand, it gives to the mind a clear, strong, varied presentation of the affairs of the world to-day as they specially affect women. Excellent writers and plenty of them furnish the material; it is good reading straight through.

My special satisfaction in this monthly is in its breadth of view. The need of the ballot is strongly emphasized, and due record is kept of the progress of the equal suffrage movement; but far more ground than that is covered. Studies are given of the previous position of women, of her place in different countries and classes, of her connection with the other stirring questions of the day.

Reading this, we gather an increasing sense of the real world-issues of which the woman's movement is not only in itself an interesting part, but one in the solution of which is shown to be that of many others. People who shrink from "feminism" in its more intense and accentuated forms, will find here a more proportional treatment, enlightening and persuasive.

*"The Englishwoman." Published by Sidgwick & Jackson, 3 Adam St., Adelphi. London, W. C. England. Monthly, 1s. Yearly, 14s. 6d. post free.

*

The Woman's Journal,* so long our best exponent of the equal rights movement in America, is now the official organ of the National American Women suffrage association.

This is as it should be. The association needs an organ, and The Woman's Journal has always needed and desired a wider support than the equal suffragists gave it.

*The Woman's Journal. Saturday weekly. $1.00 yearly, No. 585 Boylston St., Boston, Mass.

It is the earnest wish of The Forerunner that every American "equal suffragist" take the Woman's Journal, and so keep in touch with the movement. It is now but one dollar a year, which, for such a weekly, is more than reasonable.

It is also the earnest wish of The Forerunner that every American interested in the woman's movement the world over, and its English status in particular, should take The Englishwoman. That costs fourteen shillings a year, and is worth it.

And who is to take The Forerunner? Only those who like it and find it useful.

PERSONAL PROBLEMS

Problem 1st. A woman of thirty, single and intending so to remain, owning a tiny cottage in the woods near a large city; exhausted by ten years' overwork and having spent her savings on doctor's bills, asks two questions:

(a) Why cannot she stay at home and enjoy it?

(b) Can one love a man too much? (There was a man, but he went away.)

To (a) the answer is: one cannot live at home, and earn one's living without practicing some domestic industry. Of these two obvious and common ones are:

Take in washing:--not strong enough.

Take in sewing?--How about that?

A large city ought to furnish sewing and mending enough to keep one woman who owns a cottage. Five dollars a week ought to do it, including carfare.

Then comes the more various tasks; to make some one thing excellently well, and sell it: taking orders: making a little business of one's own.

The age of domestic industry is really past; but a lone woman with no rent to pay ought to make good, unless too ill to work at all.

If there is any ground with the cottage she could raise some food perhaps.

Third possibility: take another woman to board: or a child, if competent to care for children.

As to the second question: Yes, one can; one often does. If by "loving" one means "wanting." Love, pure love, strong giving love, does not exhaust nor injure. One can love a lifetime, without return--if it's that kind. But to hopelessly wish for what one cannot have is an illness. If that is the case it is time for a decided change of heart.

The world is full of people to love and serve; and a brave rational attitude of living ought to cure and strengthen.

Sister--sit quiet in the door of the little cottage: say "I am here to serve; to work for the world. I am willing. My own life is desolate--well? So are the lives of many. That I must bear. There are many years before me to be lived through--bravely and lovingly. If I die--that's no hardship; if I live I will do the work I'm here for."

Then study out your case with dispassionate interest; as if it were some one else's; and do what is wise. When you are strong enough, if you are willing to do housework (a job always waiting) for six months, it should give you a clear $150.00, to live another six months without care, and to practice the art you like best. Plan ahead; bear what you have now in the determined hope of what you like better in five years--ten years--for the rest of life.

And so enlarge your range of consciousness, thinking, talking, reading about big human interests, that your own trouble shrinks in proportion.

Problem 2d. "Several of my professors in the University have such a condescending attitude toward women that most of us girls find it very hard to do our best. In some classes, we are actually, as a sex, marked lower than the men of the class. We have found in every instance that the wives of these professors are of the lowest tabby-cat variety, gossipy, infantile, at times malicious.

Q. (a) Can you believe that these trained men would be as illogical as to judge us all by their wives?

Q. (b) Is there any way even to make a start to root out this idea that all women are cast from the same mold,"--Studiosa.

Ans. (a) "Trained" men are not necessarily logical men. Logic in some fields does not imply logic in all. No matter how logical or how much trained, most men are illogical about women. (As are most women also.)

Ans. (b) Yes. The way to start,--and finish--this idea that "all women are cast from the same mold" is to prove that they are not by being different. The likeness men see in women is the likeness of sex. Show them the difference in human personality.

Problem 3d. "It is almost impossible for married women to go on teaching. Just as I am at my best, my usefulness is nullified because I am married. Would you please outline a plan of organization among married women who wish to continue practicing their profession, thru which they may arouse other women, and also reach the authorities who have control over their work?"--E. M. K.

Ans. The most suitable organization among married women, and single ones as well, whereby to "arouse other women and reach the authorities" is political organization. That question is easily answered--by securing equal suffrage.

Problem 4th. "Several of us girls wish to associate with our men friends as real comrades, paying our half of theatre tickets, suppers and the like, as we have as much money, or as little, as they. They are fine young men, decidedly worth while. Yet they make the most astonishingly stupid objections, as do most of the other girls. It is not 'polite' or 'customary,' it is a man's 'privilege,' etc., etc. Could you not give us suggestions, perhaps in story form, of how to win the young men, and other girls too, without being too sharp-angled, over to our side?"--College Girl.

Ans. I knew of a good arrangement between a man and a woman on this basis. If he invited her, he paid for both. If she invited him, she paid for both. If both went on their several initiatives each paid for him or herself.

As to how to "win over" the most conservative of beings, young men and young women, one can only recommend the trump card in any hand,--a sweet and winning personality;--not "feminine influence," but personal influence. If one's company is much desired, one can dictate terms.

Further; don't be stubborn about it. Ultimate principles are one thing,--personal application are quite another. Vary your attitude according to the degree of intelligence and prejudice you have to deal with.

Problem 5th. "A person is condemned to die for a crime he did not commit. Should he as a good citizen submit peaceably to his own murder (legal) or fight for his life, killing jailors perhaps, till overpowered?"

Ans. "As a good citizen" he should submit. See Socrates.

"In answer to question under 'Personal Problems' in June Forerunner, 'Why don't people wake up and live! World size?' Will submit:

Ans. (a) Laziness. If people knew that thirty minutes of a healthful regimen practiced daily would double the daily pleasure of living and add ten years to the span of life, nine out of ten would neglect it. And (b) thoughtlessness through faulty education; the primary function of mental culture being to teach people to think, analyze, and solve the problems of life, and cultivate the memory; but memory is too often given first place to the exclusion of the others."--A. O. H.

This is an excellent answer. There are others.--C. P. G.

THE EDITOR'S PROBLEM

To pay its running expenses this little magazine must have about three thousand subscribers. It now has between eleven and twelve hundred.

We want, to make good measure, two thousand more. This is a bare minimum, providing no salary to the editor. If enough people care for the magazine to support it to that extent, the editor will do her work for nothing--and be glad of the chance! If enough people care for it to support her--she will be gladder.

Do you like the magazine, its spirit and purpose? Do you find genuine interest and amusement in the novel--the short story? Do the articles appeal to you? Do the sermons rouse thought and stir to action? Are the problems treated such as you care to study? Does the poetry have bones to it as well as feathers? Does it give you your dollar's worth in the year? And do you want another dollar's worth?

Most of the people who take it like it very much. We are going to print, a few at a time, some of the pleasant praises our readers send. They are so cordial that we are moved to ask all those who do enjoy this little monthly service of sermon and story, fun and fiction, poetry and prose,

First, To renew their subscriptions.

Second, Each to get one new subscriber. (Maybe more!)

Third, To make Christmas presents of subscriptions, or of bound volumes of the first year.

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"Women and Economics" $1.50

Since John Stuart Mill's essay there has been no book dealing with the whole position of women to approach it in originality of conception and brilliancy of exposition.--London Chronicle.

A remarkable book. A work on economics that has not a dull page--the work of a woman about women that has not a flippant word.--Boston Transcript.

Will be widely read and discussed as the cleverest, fairest, most forcible presentation of the view of the rapidly increasing group who look with favor on the extension of industrial employment to women.--Political Science Quarterly.

"Concerning Children" $1.25

WANTED:--A philanthropist, to give a copy to every English-speaking parent.--The Times, New York.

Should be read by every mother in the land.--The Press, New York.

Wholesomely disturbing book that deserves to be read for its own sake.--Chicago Dial.

"In This Our World" (Poems) $1.25

There is a joyous superabundance of life, of strength, of health, in Mrs. Gilman's verse, which seems born of the glorious sunshine and rich gardens of California.--Washington Times.

The poet of women and for women, a new and prophetic voice in the world. Montaigne would have rejoiced in her.--Mexican Herald.

"The Yellow Wall Paper" $0.50

Worthy of a place beside some of the weird masterpieces of Hawthorne and Poe.--Literature.

As a short story it stands among the most powerful produced in America.--Chicago News.

"The Home" $1.00

Indeed, Mrs. Gilman has not intended her book so much as a treatise for scholars as a surgical operation on the popular mind.--The Critic, New York.

It is safe to say that no more stimulating arraignment has ever before taken shape and that the argument of the book is noble, and, on the whole, convincing.--Congregationalist, Boston.

"Human Work" $1.00

Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman has been writing a new book, entitled "Human Work." It is the best thing that Mrs. Gilman has done, and it is meant to focus all of her previous work, so to speak.--Tribune, Chicago.

In her latest volume, "Human Work," Charlotte Perkins Gilman places herself among the foremost students and elucidators of the problem of social economics.--"San Francisco Star._

It is impossible to overestimate the value of the insistence on the social aspect of human affairs as Mrs. Gilman has outlined it.--Public Opinion.

IN PREPARATION:

"What Diantha Did" (A Novel) $1.00

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THE FORERUNNER CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN'S MAGAZINE CHARLTON CO., 67 WALL ST., NEW YORK

AS TO PURPOSE:

What is The Forerunner? It is a monthly magazine, publishing stories short and serial, article and essay; drama, verse, satire and sermon; dialogue, fable and fantasy, comment and review. It is written entirely by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

What is it For? It is to stimulate thought: to arouse hope, courage and impatience; to offer practical suggestions and solutions, to voice the strong assurance of better living, here, now, in our own hands to make.

What is it about? It is about people, principles, and the questions of every-day life; the personal and public problems of to-day. It gives a clear, consistent view of human life and how to live it.

Is it a Woman's magazine? It will treat all three phases of our existence--male, female and human. It will discuss Man, in his true place in life; Woman, the Unknown Power; the Child, the most important citizen.

Is it a Socialist Magazine? It is a magazine for humanity, and humanity is social. It holds that Socialism, the economic theory, is part of our gradual Socialization, and that the duty of conscious humanity is to promote Socialization.

Why is it published? It is published to express ideas which need a special medium; and in the belief that there are enough persons interested in those ideas to justify the undertaking.

AS TO ADVERTISING:

We have long heard that "A pleased customer is the best advertiser." The Forerunner offers to its advertisers and readers the benefit of this authority. In its advertising department, under the above heading, will be described articles personally known and used. So far as individual experience and approval carry weight, and clear truthful description command attention, the advertising pages of The Forerunner will be useful to both dealer and buyer. If advertisers prefer to use their own statements The Forerunner will publish them if it believes them to be true.

AS TO CONTENTS:

The main feature of the first year is a new book on a new subject with a new name:--

"Our Androcentric Culture." this is a study of the historic effect on normal human development of a too exclusively masculine civilization. It shows what man, the male, has done to the world: and what woman, the more human, may do to change it.

"What Diantha Did." This is a serial novel. It shows the course of true love running very crookedly--as it so often does--among the obstructions and difficulties of the housekeeping problem--and solves that problem. (NOT by co-operation.)

Among the short articles will appear:

"Private Morality and Public Immorality." "The Beauty Women Have Lost" "Our Overworked Instincts." "The Nun in the Kitchen." "Genius: Domestic and Maternal." "A Small God and a Large Goddess." "Animals in Cities." "How We Waste Three-Fourths Of Our Money." "Prize Children" "Kitchen-Mindedness" "Parlor-Mindedness" "Nursery-Mindedness"

There will be short stories and other entertaining matter in each issue. The department of "Personal Problems" does not discuss etiquette, fashions or the removal of freckles. Foolish questions will not be answered, unless at peril of the asker.

AS TO VALUE:

If you take this magazine one year you will have:

One complete novel . . . By C. P. Gilman One new book . . . By C. P. Gilman Twelve short stories . . . By C. P. Gilman Twelve-and-more short articles . . . By C. P. Gilman Twelve-and-more new poems . . . By C. P. Gilman Twelve Short Sermons . . . By C. P. Gilman Besides "Comment and Review" . . . By C. P. Gilman "Personal Problems" . . . By C. P. Gilman And many other things . . . By C. P. Gilman

DON'T YOU THINK IT'S WORTH A DOLLAR?

THE FORERUNNER CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN'S MAGAZINE CHARLTON CO., 67 WALL ST., NEW YORK

_____ 19__

Please find enclosed $_____ as subscription to "The Forerunner" from _____ 19___ to _____ 19___

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THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN AUTHOR, OWNER & PUBLISHER

1.00 A YEAR .10 A COPY

Volume 1. No. 11 SEPTEMBER, 1910 Copyright for 1910 C. P. Gilman

Your Unborn Grandchild is more real then your Buried Grandfather. Let us then Obliterate Graveyards and Build Babygardens.

TO-MORROW NIGHT

Marginal mile after mile of smooth-running granite embankment, Washed by clean waters, clean seas and clean rivers embracing; Pier upon pier lying wide for the ships of all seas to foregather, Broad steps of marble, descending, for the people to enter the water, White quays of marble, with music, and myriad pleasure-boats waiting; Music of orchestras playing in blossoming parks by the river, Playing on white-pillared piers where the lightfooted thousands are dancing, Dancing at night in the breeze flowing fresh from the sea and the river; Music of flute and guitar from the lovers afloat on the water, Music of happy young voices far-flying across the bright ripples, Bright with high-glittering ships and the low rosy lanterns of lovers, Bright with the stars overhead and the stars of the city beside them, Their city, the heaven they know, and love as they love one another.

MR. ROBERT GREY SR.

I thought I knew what trouble was when Jimmy went away. It was bad enough when he was clerking in Barstow and I only saw him once a week; but now he'd gone to sea.

He said he'd never earn much as a clerk, and he hated it too. He'd saved every cent he could of his wages and taken a share in the Mary Jenks, and I shouldn't see him again for a year maybe,--maybe more. She was a sealer.

O dear! I'd have married him just as he was; but he said he couldn't keep me yet, and if they had luck he'd make 400 per cent. on his savings that voyage,--and it was all for me. My blessed Jimmy!

He hadn't been gone but a bare fortnight when "unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster" on our poor heads. First father broke his arm. There was the doctor to pay, and all that plaster cast thing, and of course I had to do the milking and all the work. I didn't mind that a bit. We hadn't any horse then, to take care of, and Rosy, our cow, was a dear; gentle as a kitten, and sweet-breathed as a baby. But it put back all the farm work, of course; we couldn't hire, and there wasn't enough to go shares on. Mother was pretty wretched, and no wonder.

And then Rosy was stolen! That did seem the last straw. As long as Rosy was there and I could milk her, we shouldn't starve.

Poor father! There he sat, with that plaster arm in the sling--the other one looking so discouraged and nerveless, and his head bowed on his breast; the hand hanging, the strong busy fingers laxly open.

"I'll go and look," he said, starting up, "where's my hat?"

"It's no use looking, father," said I, "the halter's gone, there are big footprints beside her hoof-marks out to the road, and then quite a stamped place, and then wagon wheels and her nice little clean tracks going off after the wagon. Plain stolen."

He sat down again and groaned.

"Thought I heard a wagon in the middle of the night," said mother, weakly. Her face was flushed, and her eyes ran over. "I can't sleep much you know. I ought to have spoken, but you need your sleep."

I ran to her and kissed her.

"Now mother dear! Don't you fret over it,--please don't! We'll find Rosy. I'll get Mrs. Clark to 'phone for me at once."

"'Phone where?" said father. "It's no use 'phoning. Its those gypsies. And they got to town hours ago--and Rosy's beef by this time." He set his jaw hard; but there were tears in his eyes, too.

I was nearly distracted myself. "If only Jimmy were here," I said, "he'd find her!"

"I don't doubt he'd make a try," said father, "but it's too late."

I ran over to Mrs. Clark, and we 'phoned to the police in Barstow, and sure enough they found the hide and horns! It didn't do us any good. They arrested some gypsies, but couldn't prove anything; shut one of 'em up for vagrancy, too,--but that didn't do us any good, either. And if they'd proved it and convicted him it wouldn't have brought back Rosy,--or given us another cow.

Then mother got sick. It was pure discouragement as much as anything, I think, and she missed Rosy's milk,--she used to half live on it. After she was sick she missed it more, there were so few things she could eat,--and not many of those I could get for her.

O how I did miss Jimmy! If he'd been there he'd have helped me to see over it all. "Sho!" he'd have said. "It's hard lines, little girl, now; but bless you, a broken arm's only temporary; your father'll be as good as ever soon. And your mother'll get well; she's a strong woman. I never saw a stronger woman of her age. And as to the food--just claim you're 'no breakfast' people, and believe in fasting for your health!"

That's the way Jimmy met things, and I tried to say it all to myself, and keep my spirits up,--and theirs. But Jimmy was at sea.

Well, father couldn't work, it had to be his right arm, of course. And mother couldn't work either; she was just helpless and miserable, and the more she worried the sicker she got, and the sicker she got the more she worried. My patience! How I did work! No time to read, no time to study, no time to sew on any of the pretty white things I was gradually accumulating. I got up before daylight, almost; kept the house as neat as I could, and got breakfast, such as it was. Father could dress himself after a fashion, and he could sit with mother when I was outside working in the garden. I began that garden just as an experiment, the day after father broke his arm. The outlay was only thirty cents for lettuce and radish seed, but it took a lot of work.

Then there was mother to do for, and father to cheer up (which was hardest of all), and dinner and supper to get,--and nothing to get them with, practically.

The doctor didn't push us any, but father hates a debt as he hates poison, and mother is a natural worrier. "She is killing herself with worry," the doctor said; and he had no anti-toxin for that, apparently.

And then, as if that wasn't enough, that Mr. Robert Grey Sr. took advantage of our misfortunes and began to make up to me again.

I never liked the old man since I was a little girl. He was always picking me up and kissing me, when I didn't want to in the least. When I got older he'd pinch my checks, and offer me a nickle if I'd kiss him.

Mother liked him, for he stood high in the church, and was a charitable soul. Father liked him because he was successful--father always admired successful men;--and Mr. Grey got his money honestly, too, father said. He was a kind old soul. He offered to send me to college, and I was awfully tempted; but father couldn't bear a money obligation,--and I couldn't bear Mr. Grey.

There was a Robert Grey Jr., who was disagreeable enough; a thin, pimply, sanctimonious young fellow, with a class of girls in sunday-school. He was sickly enough, but Mr. Robert Grey Sr. was worse. He sort of tottered and threw his feet about as he walked; and kind or not kind, I couldn't bear him. But he came around now all the time.

He brought mother nice things to eat,--you can't refuse gifts to the sick,--and they were awfully nice; he has a first class cook. And he brought so much that there was enough for father too. We had to eat it to save it, you see,--but I hated every mouthful. I lived on our potatoes mostly, and they were poor enough--in June--and no milk to go with them.

He came every day, bringing his basket of delicacies for mother, and he'd chat awhile with her--she liked it; and he'd sit and talk with father--he liked it; and then he'd hang around me--and I had to be civil to him! But I did not like it a bit. I couldn't bear the old man with his thin grey whiskers, and his watery gray eyes, and his big pink mouth--color of an old hollyhock.

But he came and came, and nobody could fail to see what he wanted; but O dear me! How I wished for Jimmy. My big, strong, brisk boy, with the jolly laugh and the funny little swears that he invented himself! I watched the shipping news, and waited and hoped; he might come back any time now, if they'd had luck. But he didn't come. Mr. Robert Grey Sr. was there every day--and Jimmy didn't come.

I tried not to cry. I needed all my strength and courage to keep some heart in father and mother, and I tried always to remember what Jimmy would have said; how he'd have faced it. "Don't be phazed by anything," he used to say. "Everything goes by--give it time. Don't holler! Don't give a jam!" (People always looked so surprised when Jimmy said "Jam!") "Just hang on and do the square thing. You're not responsible for other people's sorrows. Hold up your own end."

Jimmy was splendid! He used to read to me about an old philosopher called Euripides, and I got to appreciate him too. But when the papers were full of "Storms at sea"--"Terrible weather in the north"--"Gales"--"High winds"--"Losses in shipping"--it did seem as if I couldn't bear it.

Then at last it came, in a terrible list of wrecks. The Mary Jenks--lost, with all on board.

O what was the use of living! What did anything matter! Why couldn't I die! Why couldn't I die!

But I didn't. My health was as good as ever; I could even sleep--when I wasn't crying. Working hard out of doors and not eating very much makes you sleep I guess, heart or no heart. And I had to keep on working; my lettuce was up and coming on finely, rows upon rows of it, just as I had planted it, two days apart. And the radishes too, they were eatable, and we tried them.

But father laughed grimly at my small garden. "A lot of good that'll do us, child!" he said. "O Jenny--there's more than that you can do for your poor mother! I know you feel badly, and ordinarily I wouldn't say a word, but--you see how it is."

I saw how it was well enough, but it seemed to me too horrible to think of. To thrust that tottering old philanthropist right into my poor bleeding heart! I couldn't bear it.

Mother never said a word. But she looked. She'd lie there with her big hollow eyes following me around the room; and when I came to do anything for her she'd look in my face so! It was more effective than all father's talks. For father had made up his mind now, and urged me all the time.

"We might as well face the facts, Jenny," he said. "James Young is gone, and I'm sorry; and you are naturally broken-hearted. But even if you were a widow I'd say the same thing. Here is this man who has been good to you since you were a child; he will treat you well, you'll have a home, you'll be provided for when he dies. I know you're not in love with him. I don't expect it. He don't either. He has spoken to me. He don't expect miracles. Here we are, absolutely living on his food! It--it is terrible to me, Jennie! But I couldn't refuse, for your mother's sake. Now if I could pocket my pride for her sake, can't you pocket your grief? You can't bring back the dead."

"O father, don't!" I said. "How can you talk so! O Jimmy! Jimmy!--If you were here!"

"He isn't here--he never will be!" said father steadily. "But your mother is here, and sick. Mr. Grey wants to send her to a sanitarium--'as a friend.' I can't let him do that,--it would cost hundreds of dollars. But--as a son-in-law I could."

Mother didn't say a thing--dear mother. But she looked at me.

They made me feel like a brute, between them; at least father did. He kept right on talking.

"Mr. Grey is a good man," he said, "an unusually good man. If he was a bad man I'd never say a word."

"He was when he was young, old Miss Green says," I answered.

"I am ashamed of you, Jennie," said father, "to listen to such scandalous gossip! How--how unmaidenly of you! I dare say he was a little wild,--forty years ago. Most young fellows are, and he was rich and handsome. But he has been a shining light in this community for forty years.--A good husband--a good father."

"What'd his wife die of?" I asked suddenly.

"An operation,--but he did everything for her. She had the best doctors and nurses. She was a good deal of an invalid, I believe, after Robert Jr. was born."

"He's not much!" said I.

"No, Robert Jr. has been a great disappointment to his father--the great disappointment of his life, I may say; though he was very fond of his wife. But he won't trouble you any, Jenny; his father is going to send him to Europe for a long time--for his health. Now Jenny, all this is ancient history. Here is a good kind man who loves you dearly, and wants to marry you at once. If you do it you may save your mother's life,--and set me on my feet again for what remains of mine. I never said a word while you were engaged to Jimmy Young, but now it's a plain duty."

That night Mr. Grey Sr. came as usual. He had sent round his car and got mother to take a ride that afternoon. It did her good, too. And when he came father went out and sat with her, and left me to him:--and he asked me to marry him.

He told me all the things he'd do for me--for mother--for father. He said he shouldn't live very long anyway, and then I could be my own mistress, with plenty of money. And I couldn't say a word, yes or no.

I sat there, playing with the edge of the lamp-mat--and thinking of Jimmy.

And then Mr. Robert Grey Sr. made a mistake. He got a hold of my hand and fingered it. He came and took me in his arms--and kissed my mouth.

I jerked away from him--he almost fell over. "No! O NO!" I cried. "I can't do it Mr. Grey. I simply can't!"

He turned the color of ashes.

"Why not?" he said.

"Because it isn't decent," said I firmly. "I can't bear to have you touch me--never could. I will be a servant to you--I will work for you--nurse you--but to be your wife!--I'm sorry Mr. Grey, but I can't do it."

I ran upstairs, and cried and cried; and I had reason to cry, for father was a living thundercloud after that, and mother was worse; and they wouldn't take any more of Mr. Grey's kindnesses, either of them.

My lettuce and radishes kept us alive until the potatoes were ripe. I sold them, fresh every day. Walked three miles with a big basket full every morning, to one of the summer hotels. It was awfully heavy, especially when it rained. They didn't pay much, but it kept us--a dollar a day, sometimes more.

Father got better in course of time, of course, and went to work on the farm in a discouraged sort of way. But mother was worse, if anything. She never blamed me--never said a word; but her eyes were a living reproach.

"Mother, dear," I begged her, "do forgive me! I'll work till I drop, for you; I'll deny myself everything: I'll do most anything that's decent and honest. But to marry a man you don't love is not honest; and to marry an old invalid like that--it's not decent."

She just sighed--didn't say anything.

"Cheer up mother, do! Father's almost well; we can get through this year somehow. Next year I can make enough to buy a cow, really."

But it wasn't more than a month from that time, I was sitting on the door stone at twilight--thinking of Jimmy, of course--and--there was Jimmy. I thought it was his ghost; but if it was it was a very warm-blooded one.

As to old Mr. Robert Grey, Sr., he persuaded little Grace Salters to marry him; a pretty, foolish, plump little thing; and if you'll believe it, she died within a year--she and her baby with her.

Well. If ever anybody was glad I was.

I don't mean glad she was dead, poor girl; but glad I didn't marry him, and did marry Jimmy.

WHAT VIRTUES ARE MADE OF

"Making a virtue of necessity" we say, somewhat scornfully; and never consider that all virtues are so made.

"The savage virtues" of endurance, patience, gratitude, hospitality, are easily seen to be precisely the main necessities of savages. Their daily hardships and occasional miseries were such that an extra store of endurance was needed, and this they artificially cultivated by the system of initiation by torture.

The Spartans used the same plan, training the young soldier to bear a doubly heavy spear, that the real one might be light to his hand.

Patience was needed by the hunter, and still more by the laboring squaw; gratitude sprang from the great need--and rarity--of mercy or service; and hospitality is always found in proportion to the distance, difficulty, and danger of traveling. Courage, as the preeminent virtue of manhood, rose to this prominence later in history, under conditions of constant warfare.

Where you have to meet danger, and your danger is best overcome by courage, by that necessity courage becomes a virtue. It has not been deemed a virtue in women, because it was not a necessity. They were not allowed to face outer danger; and what dangers they had were best escaped by avoidance and ingenuity. Amusingly enough, since the woman's main danger came through her "natural protector"--man; and since her skill and success in escaping from or overcoming him was naturally not valued by him, much less considered a necessity; this power of evasion and adaptation in woman has never been called a virtue. Yet it is just as serviceable to her as courage to the man, and therefore as much a virtue.

Honesty is a modern virtue. It existed, without a name and without praise, among savages; but its place among virtues comes with the period of commercial life. Without some honesty, no commerce; it is absolutely necessary to keep the world going; its absence in any degree is a social injury; therefore we extol honesty and seek to punish dishonesty, as the savage never thought of doing.

All men are not honest in this commercial period, nor were all men brave in the period of warfare: but they all agree in praising the virtue most needed at the time.

Truth, as a special virtue, is interesting to study. The feeling of trust in the word of another is of great value, under some conditions. Under what conditions? In slavery? No. Truthfulness is evidently not advantageous to slaves, for they do not manifest, or even esteem that quality.

Those same Spartans, to whom courage and endurance stood so high, thought but little of truth and honesty, and taught their boys to steal. In warfare trickery and robbery are part of the game.

Where do we find the "word of honour" most valued? Among gentlefolk and nobles, and those who inherit their traditions and impulses. It is conditioned upon freedom and power. You must trust a man's word--when you have no other hold upon him!

Mercy, kindness, "humanity"--as we quite justifiably call it,--is a very young virtue, growing with social growth. Cruelty was once the rule; now the exception. The more inextricably our lives are interwoven in the social fabric, the more we need the mutual love which is the natural state of social beings; and this feeling becoming a necessity, it also becomes a virtue. Similarly, as our lives depend on the presence and service of other animals we need to be kind to them; and in our highest development so far, kindness to animals has been elected virtue.

But of all virtues made of necessity, none is more glaringly in evidence than the one we call "virtue" itself,--chastity. We call it "virtue" because it is the quality--and the only quality--which has been a necessity to the possessor--woman. Her life depended absolutely on man. He valued her in one relation, and in that relation demanded this one thing;--that she serve him alone.

Because of this demand, to her an absolute necessity, we have developed the virtue of chastity, and praised it above all others--in woman! But in men it was not even considered a virtue, much less demanded and enforced.

Could anything be clearer proof that virtue was made of necessity?

What we need to study now is the chief necessity of modern life. When we have found that out we shall be able to rearrange our scale of virtues.

ANIMALS IN CITIES

A city is a group residence for human beings. There is no room in it for any animal but one--Genus Homo. At present we make a sort of menagerie of it.

Genus Homo is the major factor, bus he shares his common home with many other beasts, genus equus, genus canis, genus felis, and members of others whose Latin names are not so familiar.

The horse is most numerous. He is a clean animal, a good friend and strong servant where animals belong--in the country. In the city he is an enemy. His stable is a Depot for the Wholesale Distribution of Diseases.

The services of the horse, and the tons upon tons of fertilizing material produced by him, are financially valuable; but the injury from many deaths, the yearly drain from long sickness, and all the doctors and druggists bills, amounts to a far greater loss.

There is no horse work in a city that cannot be done by machine. The carriage, wagon, truck and dray, can take his place as workers; and they breed no flies.

We are learning, learning fast, how large a proportion of diseases spring from minute living things which get inside of us and play havoc with our organism. And very lately we are learning further, that of all the benevolent distributors of disease none are more swift and sure than certain insects; insects which are born and bred in and upon the bodies and excreta of animals.

It is true that our kitchen garbage furnishes another popular nursery for flies, but the unclean stable is the other breeding place.

Next in number to the horse come the dog and cat. These creatures are not healthy and not happy in a city. They cannot be kept there without injury to them; and the injury is more than revenged upon their keepers. The dog furnishes his quota of deaths from hydrophobia, as well as plain "assault and battery;" he defiles our sidewalks, and the fruits and vegetables exposed upon our sidewalks; he keeps us awake by his forlorn howling; he has diseases of his own which we may receive from him; and he has fleas.

The flea, as well as the fly, is a valiant and industrious purveyor of disease. From beast to beast they hop, carrying their toxic germs with them: and the dog, displeased with his persecutors, scratches them off upon our carpets.

The same applies to cats. A cat in the country is clean and safe; a cat in the city is neither--if it has any freedom. If a young kitten, cleansed and flealess, were reared in a lofty apartment, it would be clean, doubtless; but the usual cat is free on intersecting fences; and in the contact of warfare, or of gentler feelings, the flea is free to travel and exchange.

The rat and mouse come under the same condemnation; they have fleas. They make dirt. They tend to increase and maintain our insect pests and terrors. They penetrate to all unsavory places. They acquire disease themselves, or carry the germs of it in their blood or on their fur. Their parasites gather them up and give them to us. The rats will leave a sinking ship, the fleas will leave a sinking rat, and among their millions some of them come to us.

When we build cities clean and tight from basement to roof,--all concrete, brick, stone, metal, and plaster; when the holes for pipes of all sorts are scaled as they enter the home; when the kitchen is eliminated by 90 per cent. and replaced by the food laboratories; when no animal but man is allowed within city limits--and he is taught to keep clean; we can then compare, for antiseptic cleanliness with a fine hospital--and have few hospitals to compare with!

WHAT DIANTHA DID

XI.

THE POWER OF THE SCREW.

Your car is too big for one person to stir-- Your chauffeur is a little man, too; Yet he lifts that machine, does the little chauffeur, By the power of a gentle jackscrew.

Diantha worked.

For all her employees she demanded a ten-hour day, she worked fourteen; rising at six and not getting to bed till eleven, when her charges were all safely in their rooms for the night.

They were all up at five-thirty or thereabouts, breakfasting at six, and the girls off in time to reach their various places by seven. Their day was from 7 A. M. to 8.30 P. M., with half an hour out, from 11.30 to twelve, for their lunch; and three hours, between 2.20 and 5.30, for their own time, including their tea. Then they worked again from 5.30 to 8.30, on the dinner and the dishes, and then they came home to a pleasant nine o'clock supper, and had all hour to dance or rest before the 10.30 bell for bed time.

Special friends and "cousins" often came home with them, and frequently shared the supper--for a quarter--and the dance for nothing.

It was no light matter in the first place to keep twenty girls contented with such a regime, and working with the steady excellence required, and in the second place to keep twenty employers contented with them. There were failures on both sides; half a dozen families gave up the plan, and it took time to replace them; and three girls had to be asked to resign before the year was over. But most of them had been in training in the summer, and had listened for months to Diantha's earnest talks to the clubs, with good results.

"Remember we are not doing this for ourselves alone," she would say to them. "Our experiment is going to make this kind of work easier for all home workers everywhere. You may not like it at first, but neither did you like the old way. It will grow easier as we get used to it; and we must keep the rules, because we made them!"

She laboriously composed a neat little circular, distributed it widely, and kept a pile in her lunch room for people to take.

It read thus:

UNION HOUSE Food and Service.

General Housework by the week . . . $10.00 General Housework by the day . . . $2.00 Ten hours work a day, and furnish their own food. Additional labor by the hour . . . $ .20 Special service for entertainments, maids and waitresses, by the hour . . . $ .25 Catering for entertainments. Delicacies for invalids. Lunches packed and delivered. Caffeteria . . . 12 to 2

What annoyed the young manager most was the uncertainty and irregularity involved in her work, the facts varying considerably from her calculations.

In the house all ran smoothly. Solemn Mrs. Thorvald did the laundry work for thirty-five--by the aid of her husband and a big mangle for the "flat work." The girls' washing was limited. "You have to be reasonable about it," Diantha had explained to them. "Your fifty cents covers a dozen pieces--no more. If you want more you have to pay more, just as your employers do for your extra time."

This last often happened. No one on the face of it could ask more than ten hours of the swift, steady work given by the girls at but a fraction over 14 cents an hour. Yet many times the housekeeper was anxious for more labor on special days; and the girls, unaccustomed to the three free hours in the afternoon, were quite willing to furnish it, thus adding somewhat to their cash returns.

They had a dressmaking class at the club afternoons, and as Union House boasted a good sewing machine, many of them spent the free hours in enlarging their wardrobes. Some amused themselves with light reading, a few studied, others met and walked outside. The sense of honest leisure grew upon them, with its broadening influence; and among her thirty Diantha found four or five who were able and ambitious, and willing to work heartily for the further development of the business.

Her two housemaids were specially selected. When the girls were out of the house these two maids washed the breakfast dishes with marvelous speed, and then helped Diantha prepare for the lunch. This was a large undertaking, and all three of them, as well as Julianna and Hector worked at it until some six or eight hundred sandwiches were ready, and two or three hundred little cakes.

Diantha had her own lunch, and then sat at the receipt of custom during the lunch hour, making change and ordering fresh supplies as fast as needed.

The two housemaids had a long day, but so arranged that it made but ten hours work, and they had much available time of their own. They had to be at work at 5:30 to set the table for six o'clock breakfast, and then they were at it steadily, with the dining rooms to "do," and the lunch to get ready, until 11:30, when they had an hour to eat and rest. From 12:30 to 4 o'clock they were busy with the lunch cups, the bed-rooms, and setting the table for dinner; but after that they had four hours to themselves, until the nine o'clock supper was over, and once more they washed dishes for half an hour. The caffeteria used only cups and spoons; the sandwiches and cakes were served on paper plates.

In the hand-cart methods of small housekeeping it is impossible to exact the swift precision of such work, but not in the standardized tasks and regular hours of such an establishment as this.

Diantha religiously kept her hour at noon, and tried to keep the three in the afternoon; but the employer and manager cannot take irresponsible rest as can the employee. She felt like a most inexperienced captain on a totally new species of ship, and her paper plans looked very weak sometimes, as bills turned out to be larger than she had allowed for, or her patronage unaccountably dwindled. But if the difficulties were great, the girl's courage was greater. "It is simply a big piece of work," she assured herself, "and may be a long one, but there never was anything better worth doing. Every new business has difficulties, I mustn't think of them. I must just push and push and push--a little more every day."

And then she would draw on all her powers to reason with, laugh at, and persuade some dissatisfied girl; or, hardest of all, to bring in a new one to fill a vacancy.

She enjoyed the details of her lunch business, and studied it carefully; planning for a restaurant a little later. Her bread was baked in long cylindrical closed pans, and cut by machinery into thin even slices, not a crust wasted; for they were ground into crumbs and used in the cooking.

The filling for her sandwiches was made from fish, flesh, and fowl; from cheese and jelly and fruit and vegetables; and so named or numbered that the general favorites were gradually determined.

Mr. Thaddler chatted with her over the counter, as far as she would allow it, and discoursed more fully with his friends on the verandah.

"Porne," he said, "where'd that girl come from anyway? She's a genius, that's what she is; a regular genius."

"She's all that," said Mr. Porne, "and a benefactor to humanity thrown in. I wish she'd start her food delivery, though. I'm tired of those two Swedes already. O--come from? Up in Jopalez, Inca County, I believe."

"New England stock I bet," said Mr. Thaddler. "Its a damn shame the way the women go on about her."

"Not all of them, surely," protested Mr. Porne.

"No, not all of 'em,--but enough of 'em to make mischief, you may be sure. Women are the devil, sometimes."

Mr. Porne smiled without answer, and Mr. Thaddler went sulking away--a bag of cakes bulging in his pocket.

The little wooden hotel in Jopalez boasted an extra visitor a few days later. A big red faced man, who strolled about among the tradesmen, tried the barber's shop, loafed in the post office, hired a rig and traversed the length and breadth of the town, and who called on Mrs. Warden, talking real estate with her most politely in spite of her protestation and the scornful looks of the four daughters; who bought tobacco and matches in the grocery store, and sat on the piazza thereof to smoke, as did other gentlemen of leisure.

Ross Warden occasionally leaned at the door jamb, with folded arms. He never could learn to be easily sociable with ranchmen and teamsters. Serve them he must, but chat with them he need not. The stout gentleman essayed some conversation, but did not get far. Ross was polite, but far from encouraging, and presently went home to supper, leaving a carrot-haired boy to wait upon his lingering customers.

"Nice young feller enough," said the stout gentleman to himself, "but raised on ramrods. Never got 'em from those women folks of his, either. He has a row to hoe!" And he departed as he had come.

Mr. Eltwood turned out an unexpectedly useful friend to Diantha. He steered club meetings and "sociables" into her large rooms, and as people found how cheap and easy it was to give parties that way, they continued the habit. He brought his doctor friends to sample the lunch, and they tested the value of Diantha's invalid cookery, and were more than pleased.

Hungry tourists were wholly without prejudice, and prized her lunches for their own sake. They descended upon the caffeteria in chattering swarms, some days, robbing the regular patrons of their food, and sent sudden orders for picnic lunches that broke in upon the routine hours of the place unmercifully.

But of all her patrons, the families of invalids appreciated Diantha's work the most. Where a little shack or tent was all they could afford to live in, or where the tiny cottage was more than filled with the patient, attending relative, and nurse, this depot of supplies was a relief indeed.

A girl could be had for an hour or two; or two girls, together, with amazing speed, could put a small house in dainty order while the sick man lay in his hammock under the pepper trees; and be gone before he was fretting for his bed again. They lived upon her lunches; and from them, and other quarters, rose an increasing demand for regular cooked food.

"Why don't you go into it at once?" urged Mrs. Weatherstone.

"I want to establish the day service first," said Diantha. "It is a pretty big business I find, and I do get tired sometimes. I can't afford to slip up, you know. I mean to take it up next fall, though."

"All right. And look here; see that you begin in first rate shape. I've got some ideas of my own about those food containers."

They discussed the matter more than once, Diantha most reluctant to take any assistance; Mrs. Weatherstone determined that she should.

"I feel like a big investor already," she said. "I don't think even you realize the money there is in this thing! You are interested in establishing the working girls, and saving money and time for the housewives. I am interested in making money out of it--honestly! It would be such a triumph!"

"You're very good--" Diantha hesitated.

"I'm not good. I'm most eagerly and selfishly interested. I've taken a new lease of life since knowing you, Diantha Bell! You see my father was a business man, and his father before him--I like it. There I was, with lots of money, and not an interest in life! Now?--why, there's no end to this thing, Diantha! It's one of the biggest businesses on earth--if not the biggest!"

"Yes--I know," the girl answered. "But its slow work. I feel the weight of it more than I expected. There's every reason to succeed, but there's the combined sentiment of the whole world to lift--it's as heavy as lead."

"Heavy! Of course it's heavy! The more fun to lift it! You'll do it, Diantha, I know you will, with that steady, relentless push of yours. But the cooked food is going to be your biggest power, and you must let me start it right. Now you listen to me, and make Mrs. Thaddler eat her words!"

Mrs. Thaddler's words would have proved rather poisonous, if eaten. She grew more antagonistic as the year advanced. Every fault that could be found in the undertaking she pounced upon and enlarged; every doubt that could be cast upon it she heavily piled up; and her opposition grew more rancorous as Mr. Thaddler enlarged in her hearing upon the excellence of Diantha's lunches and the wonders of her management.

"She's picked a bunch o' winners in those girls of hers," he declared to his friends. "They set out in the morning looking like a flock of sweet peas--in their pinks and whites and greens and vi'lets,--and do more work in an hour than the average slavey can do in three, I'm told."

It was a pretty sight to see those girls start out. They had a sort of uniform, as far as a neat gingham dress went, with elbow sleeves, white ruffled, and a Dutch collar; a sort of cross between a nurses dress and that of "La Chocolataire;" but colors were left to taste. Each carried her apron and a cap that covered the hair while cooking and sweeping; but nothing that suggested the black and white livery of the regulation servant.

"This is a new stage of labor," their leader reminded them. "You are not servants--you are employees. You wear a cap as an English carpenter does--or a French cook,--and an apron because your work needs it. It is not a ruffled label,--it's a business necessity. And each one of us must do our best to make this new kind of work valued and respected."

It is no easy matter to overcome prejudices many centuries old, and meet the criticism of women who have nothing to do but criticize. Those who were "mistresses," and wanted "servants,"--someone to do their will at any moment from early morning till late evening,--were not pleased with the new way if they tried it; but the women who had interests of their own to attend to; who merely wanted their homes kept clean, and the food well cooked and served, were pleased. The speed, the accuracy, the economy; the pleasant, quiet, assured manner of these skilled employees was a very different thing from the old slipshod methods of the ordinary general servant.

So the work slowly prospered, while Diantha began to put in execution the new plan she had been forced into.

While it matured, Mrs. Thaddler matured hers. With steady dropping she had let fall far and wide her suspicions as to the character of Union House.

"It looks pretty queer to me!" she would say, confidentially, "All those girls together, and no person to have any authority over them! Not a married woman in the house but that washerwoman,--and her husband's a fool!"

"And again; You don't see how she does it? Neither do I! The expenses must be tremendous--those girls pay next to nothing,--and all that broth and brown bread flying about town! Pretty queer doings, I think!"

"The men seem to like that caffeteria, don't they?" urged one caller, perhaps not unwilling to nestle Mrs. Thaddler, who flushed darkly as she replied. "Yes, they do. Men usually like that sort of place."

"They like good food at low prices, if that's what you mean," her visitor answered.

"That's not all I mean--by a long way," said Mrs. Thaddler. She said so much, and said it so ingeniously, that a dark rumor arose from nowhere, and grew rapidly. Several families discharged their Union House girls. Several girls complained that they were insultingly spoken to on the street. Even the lunch patronage began to fall off.

Diantha was puzzled--a little alarmed. Her slow, steady lifting of the prejudice against her was checked. She could not put her finger on the enemy, yet felt one distinctly, and had her own suspicions. But she also had her new move well arranged by this time.

Then a maliciously insinuating story of the place came out in a San Francisco paper, and a flock of local reporters buzzed in to sample the victim. They helped themselves to the luncheon, and liked it. but that did not soften their pens. They talked with such of the girls as they could get in touch with, and wrote such versions of these talks as suited them.

They called repeatedly at Union House, but Diantha refused to see them. Finally she was visited by the Episcopalian clergyman. He had heard her talk at the Club, was favorably impressed by the girl herself, and honestly distressed by the dark stories he now heard about Union House.

"My dear young lady," he said, "I have called to see you in your own interests. I do not, as you perhaps know, approve of your schemes. I consider them--ah--subversive of the best interests of the home! But I think you mean well, though mistakenly. Now I fear you are not aware that this-ah--ill-considered undertaking of yours, is giving rise to considerable adverse comment in the community. There is--ah--there is a great deal being said about this business of yours which I am sure you would regret if you knew it. Do you think it is wise; do you think it is--ah--right, my dear Miss Bell, to attempt to carry on a--a place of this sort, without the presence of a--of a Matron of assured standing?"

Diantha smiled rather coldly.

"May I trouble you to step into the back parlor, Dr. Aberthwaite," she said; and then;

"May I have the pleasure of presenting to you Mrs. Henderson Bell--my mother?"

*

"Wasn't it great!" said Mrs. Weatherstone; "I was there you see,-- I'd come to call on Mrs. Bell--she's a dear,--and in came Mrs. Thaddler--"

"Mrs. Thaddler?"

"O I know it was old Aberthwaite, but he represented Mrs. Thaddler and her clique, and had come there to preach to Diantha about propriety--I heard him,--and she brought him in and very politely introduced him to her mother!--it was rich, Isabel."

"How did Diantha manage it?" asked her friend.

"She's been trying to arrange it for ever so long. Of course her father objected--you'd know that. But there's a sister--not a bad sort, only very limited; she's taken the old man to board, as it were, and I guess the mother really set her foot down for once--said she had a right to visit her own daughter!"

"It would seem so," Mrs. Porne agreed. "I am so glad! It will be so much easier for that brave little woman now."

It was.

Diantha held her mother in her arms the night she came, and cried tike a baby.

"O mother dear!" she sobbed, "I'd no idea I should miss you so much. O you blessed comfort!"

Her mother cried a bit too; she enjoyed this daughter more than either of her older children, and missed her more. A mother loves all her children, naturally; but a mother is also a person--and may, without sin, have personal preferences.

She took hold of Diantha's tangled mass of papers with the eagerness of a questing hound.

"You've got all the bills, of course," she demanded, with her anxious rising inflection.

"Every one," said the girl. "You taught me that much. What puzzles me is to make things balance. I'm making more than I thought in some lines, and less in others, and I can't make it come out straight."

"It won't, altogether, till the end of the year I dare say," said Mrs. Bell, "but let's get clear as far as we can. In the first place we must separate your business,--see how much each one pays."

"The first one I want to establish," said her daughter, "is the girl's club. Not just this one, with me to run it. But to show that any group of twenty or thirty girls could do this thing in any city. Of course where rents and provisions were high they'd have to charge more. I want to make an average showing somehow. Now can you disentangle the girl part front the lunch part and the food part, mother dear, and make it all straight?"

Mrs. Bell could and did; it gave her absolute delight to do it. She set down the total of Diantha's expenses so far in the Service Department, as follows:

Rent of Union House . . . $1,500 Rent of furniture . . . $300 One payment on furniture . . . $400 Fuel and lights, etc. . . . $352 Service of 5 at $10 a week each . . . $2,600 Food for thirty-seven . . . $3,848 ----- Total . . . $9,000

"That covers everything but my board," said Mrs. Bell.

"Now your income is easy--35 x $4.50 equals $8,190. Take that from your $9,000 and you are $810 behind."

"Yes, I know," said Diantha, eagerly, "but if it was merely a girl's club home, the rent and fixtures would be much less. A home could be built, with thirty bedrooms--and all necessary conveniences--for $7,000. I've asked Mr. and Mrs. Porne about it; and the furnishing needn't cost over $2,000 if it was very plain. Ten per cent. of that is a rent of $900 you see."

"I see," said her mother. "Better say a thousand. I guess it could be done for that."

So they set down rent, $1,000.

"There have to be five paid helpers in the house," Diantha went on, "the cook, the laundress, the two maids, and the matron. She must buy and manage. She could be one of their mothers or aunts."

Mrs. Bell smiled. "Do you really imagine, Diantha, that Mrs. O'Shaughnessy or Mrs. Yon Yonson can manage a house like this as you can?"

Diantha flushed a little. "No, mother, of course not. But I am keeping very full reports of all the work. Just the schedule of labor--the hours--the exact things done. One laundress, with machinery, can wash for thirty-five, (its only six a day you see), and the amount is regulated; about six dozen a day, and all the flat work mangled.

"In a Girl's Club alone the cook has all day off, as it were; she can do the down stairs cleaning. And the two maids have only table service and bedrooms."

"Thirty-five bedrooms?"

"Yes. But two girls together, who know how, can do a room in 8 minutes--easily. They are small and simple you see. Make the bed, shake the mats, wipe the floors and windows,--you watch them!"

"I have watched them," the mother admitted. "They are as quick as--as mill-workers!"

"Well," pursued Diantha, "they spend three hours on dishes and tables, and seven on cleaning. The bedrooms take 280 minutes; that's nearly five hours. The other two are for the bath rooms, halls, stairs, downstairs windows, and so on. That's all right. Then I'm keeping the menus--just what I furnish and what it costs. Anybody could order and manage when it was all set down for her. And you see--as you have figured it--they'd have over $500 leeway to buy the furniture if they were allowed to."

"Yes," Mrs. Bell admitted, "if the rent was what you allow, and if they all work all the time!"

"That's the hitch, of course. But mother; the girls who don't have steady jobs do work by the hour, and that brings in more, on the whole. If they are the right kind they can make good. If they find anyone who don't keep her job--for good reasons--they can drop her."

"M'm!" said Mrs. Bell. "Well, it's an interesting experiment. But how about you? So far you are $410 behind."

"Yes, because my rent's so big. But I cover that by letting the rooms, you see."

Mrs. Bell considered the orders of this sort. "So far it averages about $25.00 a week; that's doing well."

"It will be less in summer--much less," Diantha suggested. "Suppose you call it an average of $15.00."

"Call it $10.00," said her mother ruthlessly. "At that it covers your deficit and $110 over."

"Which isn't much to live on," Diantha agreed, "but then comes my special catering, and the lunches."

Here they were quite at sea for a while. But as the months passed, and the work steadily grew on their hands, Mrs. Bell became more and more cheerful. She was up with the earliest, took entire charge of the financial part of the concern, and at last Diantha was able to rest fully in her afternoon hours. What delighted her most was to see her mother thrive in the work. Her thin shoulders lifted a little as small dragging tasks were forgotten and a large growing business substituted. Her eyes grew bright again, she held her head as she did in her keen girlhood, and her daughter felt fresh hope and power as she saw already the benefit of the new method as affecting her nearest and dearest.

All Diantha's friends watched the spread of the work with keenly sympathetic intent; but to Mrs. Weatherstone it became almost as fascinating as to the girl herself.

"It's going to be one of the finest businesses in the world!" she said, "And one of the largest and best paying. Now I'll have a surprise ready for that girl in the spring, and another next year, if I'm not mistaken!"

There were long and vivid discussions of the matter between her and her friends the Pornes, and Mrs. Porne spent more hours in her "drawing room" than she had for years.

But while these unmentioned surprises were pending, Mrs. Weatherstone departed to New York--to Europe; and was gone some months. In the spring she returned, in April--which is late June in Orchardina. She called upon Diantha and her mother at once, and opened her attack.

"I do hope, Mrs. Bell, that you'll back me up," she said. "You have the better business head I think, in the financial line."

"She has," Diantha admitted. "She's ten times as good as I am at that; but she's no more willing to carry obligation than I am, Mrs. Weatherstone."

"Obligation is one thing--investment is another," said her guest. "I live on my money--that is, on other people's work. I am a base capitalist, and you seem to me good material to invest in. So--take it or leave it--I've brought you an offer."

She then produced from her hand bag some papers, and, from her car outside, a large object carefully boxed, about the size and shape of a plate warmer. This being placed on the table before them, was uncovered, and proved to be a food container of a new model.

"I had one made in Paris," she explained, "and the rest copied here to save paying duty. Lift it!"

They lifted it in amazement--it was so light.

"Aluminum," she said, proudly, "Silver plated--new process! And bamboo at the corners you see. All lined and interlined with asbestos, rubber fittings for silver ware, plate racks, food compartments--see?"

She pulled out drawers, opened little doors, and rapidly laid out a table service for five.

"It will hold food for five--the average family, you know. For larger orders you'll have to send more. I had to make some estimate."

"What lovely dishes!" said Diantha.

"Aren't they! Aluminum, silvered! If your washers are careful they won't get dented, and you can't break 'em."

Mrs. Bell examined the case and all its fittings with eager attention.

"It's the prettiest thing I ever saw," she said. "Look, Diantha; here's for soup, here's for water--or wine if you want, all your knives and forks at the side, Japanese napkins up here. Its lovely, but--I should think--expensive!"

Mrs. Weatherstone smiled. "I've had twenty-five of them made. They cost, with the fittings, $100 apiece, $2,500. I will rent them to you, Miss Bell, at a rate of 10 per cent. interest; only $250 a year!"

"It ought to take more," said Mrs. Bell, "there'll be breakage and waste."

"You can't break them, I tell you," said the cheerful visitor, "and dents can be smoothed out in any tin shop--you'll have to pay for it;--will that satisfy you?"

Diantha was looking at her, her eyes deep with gratitude. "I--you know what I think of you!" she said.

Mrs. Weatherstone laughed. "I'm not through yet," she said. "Look at my next piece of impudence!" This was only on paper, but the pictures were amply illuminating.

"I went to several factories," she gleefully explained, "here and abroad. A Yankee firm built it. It's in my garage now!"

It was a light gasolene motor wagon, the body built like those old-fashioned moving wagons which were also used for excursions, wherein the floor of the vehicle was rather narrow, and set low, and the seats ran lengthwise, widening out over the wheels; only here the wheels were lower, and in the space under the seats ran a row of lockers opening outside. Mrs. Weatherstone smiled triumphantly.

"Now, Diantha Bell," she said, "here's something you haven't thought of, I do believe! This estimable vehicle will carry thirty people inside easily," and she showed them how each side held twelve, and turn-up seats accommodated six more; "and outside,"--she showed the lengthwise picture--"it carries twenty-four containers. If you want to send all your twenty-five at once, one can go here by the driver.

"Now then. This is not an obligation, Miss Bell, it is another valuable investment. I'm having more made. I expect to have use for them in a good many places. This cost pretty near $3,000, and you get it at the same good interest, for $300 a year. What's more, if you are smart enough--and I don't doubt you are,--you can buy the whole thing on installments, same as you mean to with your furniture."

Diantha was dumb, but her mother wasn't. She thanked Mrs. Weatherstone with a hearty appreciation of her opportune help, but no less of her excellent investment.

"Don't be a goose, Diantha," she said. "You will set up your food business in first class style, and I think you can carry it successfully. But Mrs. Weatherstone's right; she's got a new investment here that'll pay her better than most others--and be a growing thing I do believe."

And still Diantha found it difficult to express her feelings. She had lived under a good deal of strain for many months now, and this sudden opening out of her plans was a heavenly help indeed.

Mrs. Weatherstone went around the table and sat by her. "Child," said she, "you don't begin to realize what you've done for me--and for Isobel--and for ever so many in this town, and all over the world. And besides, don't you think anybody else can see your dream? We can't do it as you can, but we can see what it's going to mean,--and we'll help if we can. You wouldn't grudge us that, would you?"

As a result of all this the cooked food delivery service was opened at once.

"It is true that the tourists are gone, mostly," said Mrs. Weatherstone, as she urged it, "but you see there are ever so many residents who have more trouble with servants in summer than they do in winter, and hate to have a fire in the house, too."

So Diantha's circulars had an addition, forthwith.

These were distributed among the Orchardinians, setting their tongues wagging anew, as a fresh breeze stirs the eaves of the forest.

The stealthy inroads of lunches and evening refreshments had been deprecated already; this new kind of servant who wasn't a servant, but held her head up like anyone else ("They are as independent as--as--'salesladies,'" said one critic), was also viewed with alarm; but when even this domestic assistant was to be removed, and a square case of food and dishes substituted, all Archaic Orchardina was horrified.

There were plenty of new minds in the place, however; enough to start Diantha with seven full orders and five partial ones.

Her work at the club was now much easier, thanks to her mother's assistance, to the smoother running of all the machinery with the passing of time, and further to the fact that most of her girls were now working at summer resorts, for shorter hours and higher wages. They paid for their rooms at the club still, but the work of the house was so much lightened that each of the employees was given two weeks of vacation--on full pay.

The lunch department kept on a pretty regular basis from the patronage of resident business men, and the young manager--in her ambitious moments--planned for enlarging it in the winter. But during the summer her whole energies went to perfecting the menus and the service of her food delivery.

Mrs. Porne was the very first to order. She had been waiting impatiently for a chance to try the plan, and, with her husband, had the firmest faith in Diantha's capacity to carry it through.

"We don't save much in money," she explained to the eager Mrs. Ree, who hovered, fascinated, over the dangerous topic, "but we do in comfort, I can tell you. You see I had two girls, paid them $12 a week; now I keep just the one, for $6. My food and fuel for the four of us (I don't count the babies either time--they remain as before), was all of $16, often more. That made $28 a week. Now I pay for three meals a day, delivered, for three of us, $15 a week--with the nurse's wages, $21. Then I pay a laundress one day, $2, and her two meals, $.50, making $23.50. Then I have two maids, for an hour a day, to clean; $.50 a day for six days, $3, and one maid Sunday, $.25. $26.75 in all. So we only make $1.25.

But! there's another room! We have the cook's room for an extra guest; I use it most for a sewing room, though and the kitchen is a sort of day nursery now. The house seems as big again!"

"But the food?" eagerly inquired Mrs. Ree. "Is it as good as your own? Is it hot and tempting?"

Mrs. Ree was fascinated by the new heresy. As a staunch adherent of the old Home and Culture Club, and its older ideals, she disapproved of the undertaking, but her curiosity was keen about it.

Mrs. Porne smiled patiently. "You remember Diantha Bell's cooking I am sure, Mrs. Ree," she said. "And Julianna used to cook for dinner parties--when one could get her. My Swede was a very ordinary cook, as most of these untrained girls are. Do take off your hat and have dinner with us,--I'll show you," urged Mrs. Porne.

"I--O I mustn't," fluttered the little woman. "They'll expect me at home--and--surely your--supply--doesn't allow for guests?"

"We'll arrange all that by 'phone," her hostess explained; and she promptly sent word to the Ree household, then called up Union House and ordered one extra dinner.

"Is it--I'm dreadfully rude I know, but I'm so interested! Is it--expensive?"

Mrs. Porne smiled. "Haven't you seen the little circular? Here's one, 'Extra meals to regular patrons 25 cents.' And no more trouble to order than to tell a maid."

Mrs. Ree had a lively sense of paltering with Satan as she sat down to the Porne's dinner table. She had seen the delivery wagon drive to the door, had heard the man deposit something heavy on the back porch, and was now confronted by a butler's tray at Mrs. Porne's left, whereon stood a neat square shining object with silvery panels and bamboo trimmings.

"It's not at all bad looking, is it?" she ventured.

"Not bad enough to spoil one's appetite," Mr. Porne cheerily agreed.

"Open, Sesame! Now you know the worst."

Mrs. Porne opened it, and an inner front was shown, with various small doors and drawers.

"Do you know what is in it?" asked the guest.

"No, thank goodness, I don't," replied her hostess. "If there's anything tiresome it is to order meals and always know what's coming! That's what men get so tired of at restaurants; what they hate so when their wives ask them what they want for dinner. Now I can enjoy my dinner at my own table, just as if I was a guest."

"It is--a tax--sometimes," Mrs. Ree admitted, adding hastily, "But one is glad to do it--to make home attractive."

Mr. Porne's eyes sought his wife's, and love and contentment flashed between them, as she quietly set upon the table three silvery plates.

"Not silver, surely!" said Mrs. Ree, lifting hers, "Oh, aluminum."

"Aluminum, silver plated," said Mr. Porne. "They've learned how to do it at last. It's a problem of weight, you see, and breakage. Aluminum isn't pretty, glass and silver are heavy, but we all love silver, and there's a pleasant sense of gorgeousness in this outfit."

It did look rather impressive; silver tumblers, silver dishes, the whole dainty service--and so surprisingly light.

"You see she knows that it is very important to please the eye as well as the palate," said Mr. Porne. "Now speaking of palates, let us all keep silent and taste this soup." They did keep silent in supreme contentment while the soup lasted. Mrs. Ree laid down her spoon with the air of one roused from a lovely dream.

"Why--why--it's like Paris," she said in an awed tone.

"Isn't it?" Mr. Porne agreed, "and not twice alike in a month, I think."

"Why, there aren't thirty kinds of soup, are there?" she urged.

"I never thought there were when we kept servants," said he. "Three was about their limit, and greasy, at that."

Mrs. Porne slipped the soup plates back in their place and served the meat.

"She does not give a fish course, does she?" Mrs. Ree observed.

"Not at the table d'hote price," Mrs. Porne answered. "We never pretended to have a fish course ourselves--do you?" Mrs. Ree did not, and eagerly disclaimed any desire for fish. The meat was roast beef, thinly sliced, hot and juicy.

"Don't you miss the carving, Mr. Porne?" asked the visitor. "I do so love to see a man at the head of his own table, carving."

"I do miss it, Mrs. Ree. I miss it every day of my life with devout thankfulness. I never was a good carver, so it was no pleasure to me to show off; and to tell you the truth, when I come to the table, I like to eat--not saw wood." And Mr. Porne ate with every appearance of satisfaction.

"We never get roast beef like this I'm sure," Mrs. Ree admitted, "we can't get it small enough for our family."

"And a little roast is always spoiled in the cooking. Yes this is far better than we used to have," agreed her hostess.

Mrs. Ree enjoyed every mouthful of her meal. The soup was hot. The salad was crisp and the ice cream hard. There was sponge cake, thick, light, with sugar freckles on the dark crust. The coffee was perfect and almost burned the tongue.

"I don't understand about the heat and cold," she said; and they showed her the asbestos-lined compartments and perfectly fitting places for each dish and plate. Everything went back out of sight; small leavings in a special drawer, knives and forks held firmly by rubber fittings, nothing that shook or rattled. And the case was set back by the door where the man called for it at eight o'clock.

"She doesn't furnish table linen?"

"No, there are Japanese napkins at the top here. We like our own napkins, and we didn't use a cloth, anyway."

"And how about silver?"

"We put ours away. This plated ware they furnish is perfectly good. We could use ours of course if we wanted to wash it. Some do that and some have their own case marked, and their own silver in it, but it's a good deal of risk, I think, though they are extremely careful."

Mrs. Ree experienced peculiarly mixed feelings. As far as food went, she had never eaten a better dinner. But her sense of Domestic Aesthetics was jarred.

"It certainly tastes good," she said. "Delicious, in fact. I am extremely obliged to you, Mrs. Porne, I'd no idea it could be sent so far and be so good. And only five dollars a week, you say?"

"For each person, yes."

"I don't see how she does it. All those cases and dishes, and the delivery wagon!"

That was the universal comment in Orchardina circles as the months passed and Union House continued in existence--"I don't see how she does it!"

THE WAITING-ROOM

The Waiting-room. With row on row Of silent strangers sitting idly there, In a large place expressionless and bare, Waiting for trains to take them other-where; And worst for children, who don't even know Where they're to go.

The Waiting-room. Dull pallid Patients here, Stale magazines, cheap books, a dreary place; Each Silent Stranger, with averted face, Waiting for Some One Else to help his case; and worst for children, wondering in fear Who will appear.

WHILE THE KING SLEPT

He was a young king, but an old subject, for he had been born and raised a subject, and became a king quite late in life, and unexpectedly.

When he was a subject he had admired and envied kings, and had often said to himself "If I were a king I would do this--and this." And now that he was a king he did those things. But the things he did were those which came from the envy of subjects, not from the conscience of kings.

He lived in freedom and ease and pleasure, for he did not know that kings worked; much less how their work should be done. And whatever displeased him he made laws against, that it should not be done; and whatever pleased him he made laws for, that it should be done--for he thought kings need but to say the word and their will was accomplished.

Then when the things were not done, when his laws were broken and disregarded and made naught of, he did nothing; for he had not the pride of kings, and knew only the outer showing of their power.

And in his court and his country there flourished Sly Thieves and Gay Wantons and Bold Robbers; also Poisoners and Parasites and Impostors of every degree.

And when he was very angry he slew one and another; but there were many of them, springing like toadstools, so that his land became a scorn to other kings.

He was sensitive and angry when the old kings of the old kingdoms criticized his new kingdom. "They are envious of my new kingdom;" he said; for he thought his kingdom was new, because he was new to it.

Then arose friends and counsellors, many and more, and they gave him criticism and suggestion, blame, advice, and special instructions. Some he denied and some he neglected and some he laughed at and some he would not hear.

And when the Sly Thieves and Gay Wantons and Bold Robbers and Poisoners and Parasites and Imposters of every degree waxed fat before his eyes, and made gorgeous processions with banners before him, he said, "How prosperous my country is!"

Then his friends and counsellors showed him the prisons--overflowing; and the hospitals--overflowing; and the asylums--overflowing; and the schools--with not enough room for the children; and the churches--with not enough children for the room; and the Crime Mill, into which babies were poured by the hundreds every day, and out of which criminals were poured by the hundreds every day; and the Disease Garden, where we raise all diseases and distribute them gratis.

And he said "I am tired of looking at these things, and tired of hearing about them. Why do you forever set before me that which is unpleasant?"

And they said "Because you are the king. If you choose you can turn the empty churches into free schools, teaching Heaven Building. You can gradually empty the hospitals and asylums and prisons, and destroy the Crime Mill, and obliterate the Disease Garden."

But the king said "You are dreamers and mad enthusiasts. These things are the order of nature and cannot be stopped. It was always so." For the king had been a subject all his life, and was used to submission; he knew not the work of kings, nor how to do it.

And the false counsellors and the false friends and all the lying servants who stole from the kitchens and the chambers answered falsely when he asked them, and said, "These evils are the order of nature. Your kingdom is very prosperous."

And the Sly Thieves and the Gay Wantons and the Bold Robbers and the Parasites and Poisoners and Impostors of every degree hung like leeches on the kingdom and bled it at every pore.

But the king was weary and slept.

Then the friends and counsellors went to the Queen, and called on her to learn Queen's work, and do it; for the King slept.

"It is King's work," she said, and strove to waken him with tales of want and sorrow in his kingdom. But he sent her away, saying "I will sleep."

"It is Queen's work also," they said to her; and though she had been a subject with her husband, she was more by nature a Queen. So she fell to and learned Queen's work, and did it.

She had no patience with the Gay Wantons and Sly Thieves and Bold Robbers; and the Poisoners and the Parasites and the Impostors of every degree were a horror to her. The false friends she saw through, and the lying servants she disbelieved.

Since the king would not, she would; and when at last he woke, behold, the throne was a double one, and the kingdom smiled and rejoiced from sea to sea.

THE HOUSEWIFE

Here is the House to hold me--cradle of all the race; Here is my lord and my love, here are my children dear-- Here is the House enclosing, the dear-loved dwelling-place; Why should I ever weary for aught that I find not here?

Here for the hours of the day and the hours of the night; Bound with the bands of Duty, rivetted tight; Duty older than Adam--Duty that saw Acceptance utter and hopeless in the eyes of the serving squaw.

Food and the serving of food--that is my daylong care; What and when we shall eat, what and how we shall wear; Soiling and cleaning of things--that is my task in the main-- Soil them and clean them and soil them--soil them and clean them again.

To work at my trade by the dozen and never a trade to know; To plan like a Chinese puzzle--fitting and changing so; To think of a thousand details, each in a thousand ways; For my own immediate people and a possible love and praise.

My mind is trodden in circles, tiresome, narrow and hard, Useful, commonplace, private--simply a small back-yard; And I the Mother of Nations!--Blind their struggle and vain!-- I cover the earth with my children--each with a housewife's brain.

OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN-MADE WORLD

XI.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.

The human concept of Sin has had its uses no doubt; and our special invention of a thing called Punishment has also served a purpose.

Social evolution has worked in many ways wastefully, and with unnecessary pain, but it compares very favorably with natural evolution.

As we grow wiser; as our social consciousness develops, we are beginning to improve on nature in more ways than one; a part of the same great process, but of a more highly sublimated sort.

Nature shows a world of varied and changing environment. Into this comes Life--flushing and spreading in every direction. A pretty hard time Life has of it. In the first place it is dog eat dog in every direction; the joy of the hunter and the most unjoyous fear of the hunted.

But quite outside of this essential danger, the environment waits, grim and unappeasable, and continuously destroys the innocent myriads who fail to meet the one requirement of life--Adaptation. So we must not be too severe in self-condemnation when we see how foolish, cruel, crazily wasteful, is our attitude toward crime and punishment.

We become socially conscious largely through pain, and as we begin to see how much of the pain is wholly of our own causing we are overcome with shame. But the right way for society to face its past is the same as for the individual; to see where it was wrong and stop it--but to waste no time and no emotion over past misdeeds.

What is our present state as to crime? It is pretty bad. Some say it is worse than it used to be; others that it is better. At any rate it is bad enough, and a disgrace to our civilization. We have murderers by the thousand and thieves by the million, of all kinds and sizes; we have what we tenderly call "immorality," from the "errors of youth" to the sodden grossness of old age; married, single, and mixed. We have all the old kinds of wickedness and a lot of new ones, until one marvels at the purity and power of human nature, that it should carry so much disease and still grow on to higher things.

Also we have punishment still with us; private and public; applied like a rabbit's foot, with as little regard to its efficacy. Does a child offend? Punish it! Does a woman offend? Punish her! Does a man offend? Punish him! Does a group offend? Punish them!

"What for?" some one suddenly asks.

"To make them stop doing it!"

"But they have done it!"

"To make them not do it again, then."

"But they do do it again--and worse."

"To prevent other people's doing it, then."

"But it does not prevent them--the crime keeps on. What good is your punishment?"

What indeed!

What is the application of punishment to crime? Its base, its prehistoric base, is simple retaliation; and this is by no means wholly male, let us freely admit. The instinct of resistance, of opposition, of retaliation, lies deeper than life itself. Its underlying law is the law of physics--action and reaction are equal. Life's expression of this law is perfectly natural, but not always profitable. Hit your hand on a stone wall, and the stone wall hits your hand. Very good; you learn that stone walls are hard, and govern yourself accordingly.

Conscious young humanity observed and philosophized, congratulating itself on its discernment. "A man hits me--I hit the man a little harder--then he won't do it again." Unfortunately he did do it again--a little harder still. The effort to hit harder carried on the action and reaction till society, hitting hardest of all, set up a system of legal punishment, of unlimited severity. It imprisoned, it mutilated, it tortured, it killed; it destroyed whole families, and razed contumelious cities to the ground.

Therefore all crime ceased, of course? No? But crime was mitigated, surely! Perhaps. This we have proven at last; that crime does not decrease in proportion to the severest punishment. Little by little we have ceased to raze the cities, to wipe out the families, to cut off the ears, to torture; and our imprisonment is changing from slow death and insanity to a form of attempted improvement.

But punishment as a principle remains in good standing, and is still the main reliance where it does the most harm--in the rearing of children. "Spare the rod and spoil the child" remains in belief, unmodified by the millions of children spoiled by the unspared rod.

The breeders of racehorses have learned better, but not the breeders of children. Our trouble is simply the lack of intelligence. We face the babyish error and the hideous crime in exactly the same attitude.

"This person has done something offensive."

Yes?--and one waits eagerly for the first question of the rational mind--but does not hear it. One only hears "Punish him!"

What is the first question of the rational mind?

"Why?"

Human beings are not first causes. They do not evolve conduct out of nothing. The child does this, the man does that, because of something; because of many things. If we do not like the way people behave, and wish them to behave better, we should, if we are rational beings, study the conditions that produce the conduct.

The connection between our archaic system of punishment and our androcentric culture is two-fold. The impulse of resistance, while, as we have seen, of the deepest natural origin, is expressed more strongly in the male than in the female. The tendency to hit back and hit harder has been fostered in him by sex-combat till it has become of great intensity. The habit of authority too, as old as our history; and the cumulative weight of all the religions and systems of law and government, have furthermore built up and intensified the spirit of retaliation and vengeance.

They have even deified this concept, in ancient religions, crediting to God the evil passions of men. As the small boy recited; "Vengeance. A mean desire to get even with your enemies: 'Vengeance is mine saith the Lord'--'I will repay.'"

The Christian religion teaches better things; better than its expositors and upholders have ever understood--much less practised.

The teaching of "Love your enemies, do good unto them that hate you, and serve them that despitefully use you and persecute you," has too often resulted, when practised at all, in a sentimental negation; a pathetically useless attitude of non-resistance. You might as well base a religion on a feather pillow!

The advice given was active; direct; concrete. "Love!" Love is not non-resistance. "Do good!" Doing good is not non-resistance. "Serve!" Service is not non-resistance.

Again we have an overwhelming proof of the far-reaching effects of our androcentric culture. Consider it once more. Here is one by nature combative and desirous, and not by nature intended to monopolize the management of his species. He assumes to be not only the leader, but the whole thing--to be humanity itself, and to see in woman as Grant Allen so clearly put it "Not only not the race; she is not even half the race, but a subspecies, told off for purposes of reproduction merely."

Under this monstrous assumption, his sex-attributes wholly identified with his human attributes, and overshadowing them, he has imprinted on every human institution the tastes and tendencies of the male. As a male he fought, as a male human being he fought more, and deified fighting; and in a culture based on desire and combat, loud with strident self-expression, there could be but slow acceptance of the more human methods urged by Christianity. "It is a religion for slaves and women!" said the warrior of old. (Slaves and women were largely the same thing.) "It is a religion for slaves and women" says the advocate of the Superman.

Well? Who did the work of all the ancient world? Who raised the food and garnered it and cooked it and served it? Who built the houses, the temples, the acqueducts, the city wall? Who made the furniture, the tools, the weapons, the utensils, the ornaments--made them strong and beautiful and useful? Who kept the human race going, somehow, in spite of the constant hideous waste of war, and slowly built up the real industrial civilization behind that gory show?--Why just the slaves and the women.

A religion which had attractions for the real human type is not therefore to be utterly despised by the male.

In modern history we may watch with increasing ease the slow, sure progress of our growing humanness beneath the weakening shell of an all-male dominance. And in this field of what begins in the nurse as "discipline," and ends on the scaffold as "punishment," we can clearly see that blessed change.

What is the natural, the human attribute? What does this "Love," and "Do good," and "Serve" mean? In the blundering old church, still androcentric, there was a great to-do to carry out this doctrine, in elaborate symbolism. A set of beggars and cripples, gathered for the occasion, was exhibited, and kings and cardinals went solemnly through the motions of serving them. As the English schoolboy phrased it, "Thomas Becket washed the feet of leopards."

Service and love and doing good must always remain side issues in a male world. Service and love and doing good are the spirit of motherhood, and the essense of human life.

Human life is service, and is not combat. There you have the nature of the change now upon us.

What has the male mind made of Christianity?

Desire--to save one's own soul. Combat--with the Devil. Self-expression--the whole gorgeous outpouring of pageant and display, from the jewels of the high priest's breastplate to the choir of mutilated men to praise a male Deity no woman may so serve.

What kind of mind can imagine a kind of god who would like a eunuch better than a woman?

For woman they made at last a place--the usual place--of renunciation, sacrifice and service, the Sisters of Mercy and their kind; and in that loving service the woman soul has been content, not yearning for cardinal's cape or bishop's mitre.

All this is changing--changing fast. Everywhere the churches are broadening out into more service, and the service broadening out beyond a little group of widows and fatherless, of sick and in prison, to embrace its true field--all human life. In this new attitude, how shall we face the problems of crime?

Thus: "It is painfully apparent that a certain percentage of our people do not function properly. They perform antisocial acts. Why? What is the matter with them?"

Then the heart and mind of society is applied to the question, and certain results are soon reached; others slowly worked toward.

First result. Some persons are so morally diseased that they must have hospital treatment. The world's last prison will be simply a hospital for moral incurables. They must by no means reproduce their kind,--that can be attended to at once. Some are morally diseased, but may be cured, and the best powers of society will be used to cure them. Some are only morally diseased because of the conditions in which they are born and reared, and here society can save millions at once.

An intelligent society will no more neglect its children than an intelligent mother will neglect her children; and will see as clearly that ill-fed, ill-dressed, ill-taught and vilely associated little ones must grow up gravely injured.

As a matter of fact we make our crop of criminals, just as we make our idiots, blind, crippled, and generally defective. Everyone is a baby first, and a baby is not a criminal, unless we make it so. It never would be,--in right conditions. Sometimes a pervert is born, as sometimes a two-headed calf is born, but they are not common.

The older, simpler forms of crime we may prevent with case and despatch, but how of the new ones?--big, terrible, far-reaching, wide-spread crimes, for which we have as yet no names; and before which our old system of anti-personal punishment falls helpless? What of the crimes of poisoning a community with bad food; of defiling the water; of blackening the air; of stealing whole forests? What of the crimes of working little children; of building and renting tenements that produce crime and physical disease as well? What of the crime of living on the wages of fallen women--of hiring men to ruin innocent young girls; of holding them enslaved and selling them for profit? (These things are only "misdemeanors" in a man-made world!)

And what about a crime like this; to use the public press to lie to the public for private ends? No name yet for this crime; much less a penalty.

And this: To bring worse than leprosy to an innocent clean wife who loves and trusts you?

Or this: To knowingly plant poison in an unborn child?

No names, for these; no "penalties"; no conceivable penalty that could touch them.

The whole punishment system falls to the ground before the huge mass of evil that confronts us. If we saw a procession of air ships flying over a city and dropping bombs, should we rush madly off after each one crying, "Catch him! Punish him!" or should we try to stop the procession?

The time is coming when the very word "crime" will be disused, except in poems and orations; and "punishment," the word and deed, be obliterated. We are beginning to learn a little of the nature of humanity its goodness, its beauty, its lovingness; and to see that even its stupidity is only due to our foolish old methods of education.

It is not new power, new light, new hope that we need, but to understand what ails us.

We know enough now, we care enough now, we are strong enough now, to make the whole world a thousand fold better in a generation; but we are shackled, chained, blinded, by old false notions. The ideas of the past, the sentiments of the past, the attitude and prejudices of the past, are in our way; and among them none more universally mischievous than this great body of ideas and sentiments, prejudices and habits, which make up the offensive network of the androcentric culture.

THE BEAUTY WOMEN HAVE LOST

We know how arbitrary, how changeable, how helplessly associative, is the "beauty sense." That which gives us a peculiar feeling of deep pleasure, received through various senses, we call "beautiful," whether it be color of form, sound, scent, or touch; but no sensation is more erratic.

Among savages absolute mutilation is considered beautiful; among partially civilized peoples, like ourselves, restriction and distortion in our bodies and those of domestic animals are still considered beautiful; and in matters of fashion, or of food, we all know the helpless proverb--"Every one to his taste."

In this general variability of taste we have in great measure failed to grasp certain laws of beauty which obtain whether appreciated or not. Abstract beauty is but a concept, a thought form for purposes of discussion. The beauty perceived pertains to something, and in that something lie its definitions and limitations. This we practically recognize in certain marked and simple forms. The points which we admire in a horse are visibly not the same as those admired in a fish or bird; the beauty of a given animal must be of its own kind.

So vivid and sharp is this law of association, that precisely the same bit of form and color which we would call beautiful while we supposed it to be an irridescent shell, would strike us with disgust if we suddenly perceived the little object to be a piece of very ancient meat. Beauty must belong--varying with its subject.

The beauty of women has suffered from too narrow a field of appreciation. It has been measured solely from a masculine viewpoint, primarily as a characteristic of sex, secondarily as pertaining to a subject creature; and associatively, to every mad extreme of fancy in nature's variant, the male.

Among other creatures the beauty of the female is mainly that of race. The lioness is a more appreciable working type of feline power than the lion, whose sex-beauty, the mane, is somewhat similar to that of a bison, or a great seal.

In our case, where the dependent female adds to her neutral race-beauty the shifting attributes of sex-attraction, she has gained to a high degree in the field man most admires, and lost in the normal beauty of humanity.

Relative size and strength are elements of beauty in an animal; neither dwarf nor giant is beautiful; and we for many years have dwarfed our women, under the direct effect of restraining conditions and the selective action of the master, whose pride would brook no equal.

Of late years, in some classes and countries, this is changing; so frequently that the tall woman no longer excites remark or disapproval.

There is no reason whatever, in a civilized condition, why the male and female should differ markedly in size, and the difference is disappearing as above noted, as is also the extreme weakness so long held desirable in women.

But in the great majority of cases our women are still content to be what they consider beautiful as women, and never to consider human beauty at all.

The disproportionate part played by costume and decoration in the sex-governed activities of the dependent woman, has given a peculiar cant to her beauty-sense. If she be well dressed,--or so considered, and richly ornamented, her sense of beauty is satisfied, quite regardless of shape, size and color in herself. This is perhaps a fortunate provision to meet our special case, where the male must be attracted as a means of livelihood, and under the average limitations of personal charms. But it is a pity, in the interest of a nobler race, that our preoccupation with cloths should so blind us to the real beauty of the human body.

I once knew a girl whose vanity led her to decline gymnasium work, on the ground that it would make her hands large. The same vanity would have urged her to it if she had even known of the beauty of a well proportioned, vigorous, active body. She had read and heard of small soft hands as a feminine attraction, but never of a smooth, strong neck, a well set head, a firm, pliant, muscular trunk, and limbs that cannot be beautiful unless they are strong.

"Slender," "plump," "rounded," "graceful,"--these words suggest beauty in a woman, but "strong" does not. Yet weakness,--in a healthy adult,--is incompatible with true beauty--race beauty--the beauty women have lost.

In their enforced restriction they have lost the beauty of expression that comes of a rich wide life, fully felt, fully expressed. Look at the puffy negation of a row of women's faces in a street car. Plump women, "pretty" women perhaps, well dressed, "stylish," not ill tempered,--and not anything else! Their range of experience is absolutely domestic; their interests and ambitions are either domestic or what they fondly call "social;" they do not feel, know, or act in the full sense of human life, and their faces show it. They are rated first, last, and all the time as mothers: mothers future, mothers present, mothers past; and much is made of "the maternal expression" in women's beauty. It belongs there, surely. It is a true large part of it; beauty in a woman could not be true which was inimical to maternity; but, but it is not the whole of life.

A man's face may be beautiful with a paternal expression, but if that is all the expression he has, he lacks much.

There is a lack of dignity in our types of female loveliness. There is the appealing type, the coquettish, the provocative, the mysterious; but seldom do we see the calm pride based on nature's mightiest power which should distinguish womanhood.

The woman of the remote past, the far distant matriarchal age, had the beauty of freedom and the beauty of power; though their hands were large, doubtless, and assuredly strong. In much later ages, while losing this, we still kept somewhat of the free beauty of untramelled bodies; but that too has gone under our binding weight of clothes. No free grace is possible under a huge, slouching, heavy hat, or to a body poised on sharp-toed shoes with towering heels.

If we knew beauty--human beauty; if we were familiar from childhood with the real proportions of the body; if we were familiar with pictures of the human figure, and then shown that same figure, the woman's, with her feet artificially mis-shapen and out of poise, her waist distorted, her head obscured, her every action hampered and confined,--we should see the ugliness of these things, as we do not now.

The human woman, now so rapidly developing, will regain the wholesome natural beauty that belongs to her as a human being; will hold, of course, the all-powerful attraction of her womanhood; but will leave to the male of her species,--to whom it properly belongs, the effort of conscious display.

COMMENT AND REVIEW

How many of you have read the life story of Alexander Irvine--"From the Bottom Up"?*

It is one of the most vivid, interesting, readable of books. It talks, it laughs, it lives,--and it reveals. It is not a "confession;" not the overflow of a self-conscious soul like Marie Barklirtseff's outpourings; it is a story; an account of what happened to the man, and how he grew.

A hungry, ragged, barefoot, ignorant little Irish boy; handicapped in all ways but three; unusually fortunate in these. He had a good body, a good mind, a good heart. Up and up and up he pushes; helped now by the body, now by the soul, now by the intellect, till we find him, still in strong middle life, educated, experienced, traveled, enobled by loving and serving, awake to our larger social needs, and working with all his splendid power to help humanity.

Never was there a man more alive; learning Greek roots while delivering milk; converting miners, practicing a score of trades, and boxing like a professional.

The book has a double value; in the hope and courage which must rise from contact with such a personality and its rich experience, and in the strong light it throws upon "how the other half live." As Rose Pastor Stokes so quaintly put it, "Half the world does not know how. The other half lives."

In this book one-half may learn much of the unnecessary misery of "the submerged;" and the other half may begin to learn how to live.

* From The Bottom Up. The life story of Alexander Irvine. Doubleday Page & Co. New York, 1910.

*

The English Suffrage papers are an inspiration--and a reproach.

"Votes for Women"--the London organ of the militant suffragist, is so solid and assured; so richly upheld; so evidently the strong voice of a strong party.

"The Common Cause," published in Manchester, is another, not militant, giving the same sense of a settled position and masterly leadership.

The women of England are awake to their needs, and valiantly support their defenders; but American women, as a rule, are still asleep as to the responsibilities of citizenship. Here suffrage papers still give much space to argument and appeal: there, they are mostly filled with the record of work planned and done; they are party organs, secure and effective.

One of our best is "The Progressive Woman" of Girard, Kansas.

It is edited by a progressive woman--Josephine Conger-Kaneko.

This is a Socialist as well as Suffragist paper, and more than that; it stands for the whole front rank of the woman's movement.

In the August number we read of Kate O'Hare's campaign for congress in Kansas; of "The Socialist Woman's Movement in Russia;" of "The White Slave Traffic"--quoting from Elizabeth Goodnow's impressive book of stories, "The Soul Market;" of "The Work of Madam Curie;" of "The Marriage Contract;" of "The Woman's Suffrage Movement and Political Parties;" with much other valuable matter.

*

The "Arena Club" of New Orleans is doing good work. It has prepared a bill against the "white slave traffic" in Louisiana, which was submitted to the legislature by Hon. J. D. Wall, Representative for East Feliciana, La. This bill is now a law, and the next step is enforcement. This calls for activity on the part of the "City Mothers."

*

"The Union Labor Advocate" is one of our exchanges, and a good one. It is the organ of the National Woman's Trade Union League. One of the most practical and useful of all woman's organizations.

As women work for the world they become more human; becoming human, they organize; and in organization grow in further humanness. This was well shown in the shirt-waist strike of last winter in New York, the new sense of common interest bringing out college women, society women, all kinds of women, to help the workingwomen in their struggle for decent conditions.

Professor Francis Squire Potter formerly of Michigan University, is now general lecturer for the League: a good field for her unusual powers.

PERSONAL PROBLEMS

The Forerunner's question in this department of the June issue, reached a good many, it would seem. Here is another response:

"When people must wake up too early every morning, half dead, or at least half asleep, to begin the ceaseless, monotonous daily grind, keep at it all day until half dead or at least half asleep until too late at night, for the mere privilege of existence, they are too tired to wake up and LIVE--the rest of the night.

When people are entombed in conventions, customs, Beliefs! from which they may only be freed by digging, filing, gnawing, scraping, wearing, themselves as well as their way out, few have the strength and spirit to emerge and LIVE--only occassionally one comes out alive."

"Such purely personal questions as 'how may I, half (or truly a minute fraction of that) educated, half alive by reason of ill-health, wholly unaccustomed to push my way in the world, grub out an existence and keep out of the poor-house, and keep out of the way of others who are doing things;' seem rather too small, and altogether too numerous."

A. These "purely personal" questions are the most universal, and open to the most universal answers.

To "Wake up and Live--World size" means this: Your personality is only the smallest part of your consciousness. A child with a hurt finger howls inconsolably; a conquering king with a hurt finger doesn't know it.

"You" are weak and ill; "you" are half educated: "you" don't know how to work--Just put "we" for "you."

"We," thousands and millions of us, are at present suffering from various wrong conditions. Taken separately, personally, these wrong conditions overwhelm us; each sits down in his or her own little circle of pain, and suffers.

Taken collectively--faced, understood, met, overcome--those wrong conditions can be removed and forgotten.

The writer of this interesting letter (thanks for its kind appreciation!) sees the trouble of living clearly enough, but does not see the joy of living.

In the first place, accept your own pain and loss, whatever it may be, as merely a part of the general pain and loss. Your own, singly, you may be unable to help; but "ours" you can help. Never mind what ails "you"--you can stand it--other people do? The human soul is a stronger thing than you think--you don't use enough of it. Unless the mind is affected, so that one is irresponsible, it is always open to a Human Being to change the attitude of the mind, and enlarge its area of consciousness.

Human Life is a huge Immortal Thing.

It has been on earth for many thousand years.

It is bigger, stronger, better, than it ever was.

It is on the verge of a new consciousness, a new power, a new joy, which will make our poor past seem like a lovingly forgotten babyhood; and our future a progressive Heaven--growing under our hands as we make it.

And our present! This is our present! Get into the game! You are human life. Human life is You.

It's a big thing. It's worth while to be alive--if you are human!

To get a lively sense of historic movement read "The Martyrdom of Man" by Winwood Reade. To get it of life today, read what you like of the rising flood of sociologic and humanitarian books and magazines of today.

When you are socially conscious--a live Human Being--your "personal problems" will take on different proportions. There is no personal trouble so great as the trouble of the world--which we have to face and conquer.

There is no personal joy so great as the joy of the world--which is ours to feel, to make, to steadily enlarge.

Change your own condition if you can, but if you cannot, spread out your life--your Human Life, till your burden is no bigger than a biscuit--to such huge consciousness.

*

"When my children were little and at home it was easy to guide and direct, but now they are in the big man-made world without judgment enough to know that the world standards are wrong, and the home standards of helpfulness and co-operation right.

I believe we are going ahead, and I'm willing enough to help build the road for others to pass over, but must my children hunger and thirst in the wilderness?"

A. This is a wide-spread problem. The trouble lies in our confounding personal and social relations. Our children are in direct connection with us physically and psychically--but not, of necessity, socially. A musician does not necessarily have musical children; a reformer does not necessarily have reforming children. There is no reason why our children should be expected to see things as we do. They may never see the way out of the wilderness as we see it.

They are to love and serve, to shelter, guard, teach--and set free!

We must do our work--and they must do theirs.

*

Here is a question from Detroit.

"I entirely agree with you in believing that children should be governed by reason, and that coercion is a mistake; but how would you suggest dealing with a child before it can possibly understand reason?"

The writer then speaks of the selfishness and rudeness of undisciplined children, and goes on:

"I have always thought that the training of a child should begin from a very early age, long before they can listen to reason at all."

She is quite right. Child culture should begin as soon as the child begins. The difficulty of the average parent is that he or she assumes "reason" to mean reasoning--oral argument.

In the reaction from our old violent discipline, they use no discipline; and for repression substitute gross indulgence.

When a child learns that fire burns by a mild, safe burning, he learns reasonably; the fire reacts--which is not a punishment, but a consequence. He should learn the rights of others as early as his own, and by similar processes. Real child culture calls for far more care and training than the old rule of thumb, but it is of a different kind.

*

"I am very much interested in your 'Androcentric Culture.' Is it your idea that the female organism was the stronger before consciousness existed only, or after that period in prehistoric times?"

For the scientific facts underlying the above work, all readers are referred to Chapter XIV. of "Pure Sociology," by Lester F. Ward. It is--or should be--in every Public Library, and should be read by every woman in the world--and by the men also.

THE EDITOR'S PROBLEM

How to enlarge the subscription list!

To pay its running expenses this little magazine must have about three thousand subscribers. It now has between eleven and twelve hundred.

We want, to make good measure, two thousand more. This is a bare minimum, providing no salary to the editor.

If enough people care for the magazine to support it to that extent, the editor will do her work for nothing--and be glad of the chance! If enough people care for it to support her--she will be gladder.

Do you like the magazine, its spirit and purpose? Do you find genuine interest and amusement in the novel--the short story? Do the articles appeal to you? Do the sermons rouse thought and stir to action? Are the problems treated such as you care to study? Does the poetry have bones to it as well as feathers? Does it give you your dollar's worth in the year? And do you want another dollar's worth?

Most of the people who take it like it very much. We are going to print, a few at a time, some of the pleasant praises our readers send. They are so cordial that we are moved to ask all those who do enjoy this little monthly service of sermon and story, fun and fiction, poetry and prose:

First, To renew their subscriptions.

Second, Each to get one new subscriber. (Maybe more!)

Third, To make Christmas present of subscriptions, or of bound volumes of the first year.

FROM LETTERS OF SUBSCRIBERS

"I am delighted to hear of the Forerunner. No one in the United States is so competent as you to write the whole of a magazine, little or big, from the beginning to end. You have the gift of expression, if anyone has, and, what is still more important, you have something to express."

*

"I enclose in this $1.00 for one year of the 'Gilmanian' and I think it a bargain to get so much of you at the price."

*

"Indeed I am more than delighted to have an opportunity to communicate regularly with you through The Forerunner, and I shall be very proud to be numbered among the charter subscribers."

*

"Herewith I send $1.00 for my subscription, with all manner of good wishes for your magazine. Our family has enjoyed every line."

*

"I laid my copy on her dish, and she was so pleased with it that she came to me with her dollar shortly afterwards."

*

"I enclose $1.00 for a year's subscription. I found The Forerunner most interesting, and shall look forward to it every month."

*

"The magazine is 'bully.' It even exceeds all my expectations, high as these were. There are so many good points about the Forerunner that I hope to come down soon with my husband to congratulate you in person."

*

"I have received the first number of your magazine, and am more than pleased with it. The first article was splendid--and ought to be read before every circle of mothers belonging to the Mothers Congress."

*

Enclosed find two subscriptions to The Forerunner. I am making Christmas gifts to my friends of your interesting and stimulating periodical."

*

"I think The Forerunner foreruns a lot of good things. It is strong, interesting, fearless, yet kindly, genial--I like it."

*

"The magazine is unique and distinctly 'Gilmanesque,' which is a sufficient recommendation to me."

*

"I am constantly surprised at your originality and versatility, and knowledge of human nature."

*

"Of course I have got to have The Forerunner! And I shall read every word of every issue. So will everybody else. But what makes you so lazy? Why don't you set the type?"

*

"Your magazine has more real common sense to the square inch than any I have ever seen. I enclose subscription for one year, beginning with the first number."

*

"I think a very great deal of this publication and shall try to have a complete file of it on hand to use for reference. I know of nothing better in the whole field of the 'Woman Question.'"

*

"I am just 'stuck' on that article 'Why we honestly fear Socialism,' in December Forerunner, and think it one of the best things to circulate for propaganda work that I have yet seen."

*

"Will you please send me a year's subscription to The Forerunner, dating from the first number. They are too good for me to miss any."

*

"I feel The Forerunner will fill a need. In my case it gratifies an absorbing desire. I knew ere it came out that women would get something for which they had waited, Lo! these many years."

*

"Your magazines are splendid and I must be among your regular readers."

*

"The first number of The Forerunner has reached us and we wish to express our appreciation of its excellence and the wish for its long life. Please find enclosed $1.00, our subscription for the current year."

*

"Mrs. ----- and I are delighted with The Forerunner and send this dollar to keep it running our way. Please send samples to the addresses on the attached list. They should all take the paper, and I shall be glad to tell them so the first chance I have."

*

"The ----- Club is using your Androcentric Culture articles as the study one evening each month as they appear. If you can't make something out of men and women, then indeed only a miracle can."

"I must have your magazine all to myself!--and trust to the Lord to provide the material bread!"

*

"B---- and I have just returned from a delightful week end with Mrs. -----. I told her about The Forerunner--and she naturally feels that life is worthless until she has seen it."

*

"The verses are all brilliant; I don't know how you can think of so many gay and serious things all at the same time. It is as if you took your conjuror's hat out and produced eggs, cannon-balls, perfume flowers, and a whole live, quivering beef at the same stroke. You are a sure conjuror."

*

"Your scintellating first number has arrived. I have been waiting for an hour of leisure in which to tell you how much we have all enjoyed it."

*

"Oh! Charlotte Perkins Gilman! You have--and do--and will--'Contribute to the great stream of civilization'--by courageously obeying the injunction, and calling aloud to your sisters to 'Let your light shine.'"

*

"If you do no other good and great thing you will certainly work one tremendous miracle; you will rouse every lazy brain that gets a glimpse into these pages with such a dynamic force that a real desire may be kindled to Think--Think--Think--for itself."

*

"I am delighted with the magazine. It is meaty, and stimulating."

*

"The valuable readable material in it justifies the absence of any text on the part of the new minister. It will create free souls and that is the great work, for while a dead body is not pleasant to look upon, a dead soul is a thousand fold worse."

*

"I enclose one year's subscription to it for my sister, to whom I am giving it as one of her Christmas presents. And I know she will enjoy The Forerunner as much as I do."

*

"The magazines are very interesting and I wish you much success. I am particularly interested in the suffrage arguments."

*

"I am charmed--thrilled with your strong trenchment work. You are one of the few who clearly see and forcibly express the fundamental difference between the old androcentric world and the new dawning age in which women and men co-operate in world building."

*

"I have been wanting and intending to congratulate you on your effort and result,--and to wish you everlasting success. It is unlike any of the present-day magazines in many ways.

Allow me to say it is most interesting, and Mr. H---- joins me in wishing for this publication a most brilliant future."

*

"Enclosed find $1.00, for which please send The Forerunner, your fine crisp magazine."

*

"I see your think marks on many an article written by both men and women, and I know they have read your books."

*

"I want ten copies of the January Forerunner. I think it is particularly good and the article on suffrage--or 'The Humanness of Women,' one of the very best things I ever read on the subject."

*

"The Forerunner is a great success! I like it all, and it is not disappointing in any respect in spite of the fact that I have been getting more impatient to see it each month since I subscribed for it."

*

"Please send The Forerunner to me at ----- -----. It does good digging--loosens up the soil nicely."

*

"I have enjoyed The Forerunner very much. I feel that I am getting more than my money's worth; so to help the cause along I am sending you herewith a few names of progressive friends, who will, I think, become subscribers, and help in turn."

[Advertisement]

SOME OF OUR EXCHANGES

The Common Cause

WHAT IS IT?

There are in England something like twenty-five National Societies for promoting the enfranchisement of women. The oldest of these is the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, which was started in 1861 and whose President is Mrs. Fawcett, LL.D. The National Union has over two hundred branches in Great Britain, and a total membership of about 20,000. It is the only British Woman's Suffrage Society affiliated to the International Woman Suffrage Alliance.

The Common Cause Is the Organ of the National Union.

It contains leaders and articles on political, social, legal and industrial matters affecting women, and is a complete record or the work done by the National Union for the enfranchisement of women in England.

The Common Cause Is the Paper of Thinking Women.

Subscriptions should be sent to

64 DEANSCATE ARCADE, MANCHESTER, ENGLAND

3 months, post free --- 1 shilling 9 pence 6 months, post free --- 3 shillings 3 pence 12 months, post free --- 6 shillings 6 pence

Every Thursday, 1 Penny

The Progressive Woman

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

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Volume 1. No. 12 OCTOBER, 1910 Copyright for 1910 C. P. Gilman

Tin soldiers have long been a popular toy. Why not tin carpenters?

ONLY MINE

They told me what she had done-- Of her life like a river free: Teaching and showing with tender truth, Giving her light to age and youth, Till fathers and mothers and children grew To listen and learn and see What the village had come to be; How they had no sickness, young or old, And had lost but one from all their fold; For all the people knew How to keep life strong and true; And I asked her how had her love begun To ripen and reach to every one.

She lifted a royal head, Standing straight, as a tree; While troops of little ones clustered and clung To raiment and hand and knee. "Should I not be glad," said she, "In health and beauty and joy like this? Babies by hundreds to cuddle and kiss; A happier town was never sung; A heaven of children for old and young; There is only one that is dead-- It was only mine," she said.

THE BOYS AND THE BUTTER

Young Holdfast and J. Edwards Fernald sat grimly at their father's table, being seen and not heard, and eating what was set before them, asking no questions for conscience' sake, as they had been duly reared. But in their hearts were most unchristian feelings toward a venerable guest, their mother's aunt, by name Miss Jane McCoy.

They knew, with the keen observation of childhood, that it was only a sense of hospitality, and duty to a relative, which made their father and mother polite to her--polite, but not cordial.

Mr. Fernald, as a professed Christian, did his best to love his wife's aunt, who came as near being an "enemy" as anyone he knew. But Mahala, his wife, was of a less saintly nature, and made no pretense of more than decent courtesy.

"I don't like her and I won't pretend to; it's not honest!" she protested to her husband, when he remonstrated with her upon her want of natural affection. "I can't help her being my aunt--we are not commanded to honor our aunts and uncles, Jonathan E."

Mrs. Fernald's honesty was of an iron hardness and heroic mould. She would have died rather than have told a lie, and classed as lies any form of evasion, deceit, concealment or even artistic exaggeration.

Her two sons, thus starkly reared, found their only imaginative license in secret converse between themselves, sacredly guarded by a pact of mutual faith, which was stronger than any outward compulsion. They kicked each other under the table, while enduring this visitation, exchanged dark glances concerning the object of their common dislike, and discussed her personal peculiarities with caustic comment later, when they should have been asleep.

Miss McCoy was not an endearing old lady. She was heavily built, and gobbled her food, carefully selecting the best. Her clothing was elaborate, but not beautiful, and on close approach aroused a suspicion of deferred laundry bills.

Among many causes for dislike for her aunt, Mrs. Fernald cherished this point especially. On one of these unwelcome visits she had been at some pains to carry up hot water for the Saturday evening bath, which was all the New England conscience of those days exacted, and the old lady had neglected it not only once but twice.

"Goodness sake, Aunt Jane! aren't you ever going to take a bath?"

"Nonsense!" replied her visitor. "I don't believe in all this wetting and slopping. The Scripture says, 'Whoso washeth his feet, his whole body shall be made clean.'"

Miss McCoy had numberless theories for other people's conduct, usually backed by well-chosen texts, and urged them with no regard for anybody's feelings. Even the authority of parents had no terrors for her.

Sipping her tea from the saucer with deep swattering inhalations, she fixed her prominent eyes upon the two boys as they ploughed their way through their bread and butter. Nothing must be left on the plate, in the table ethics of that time. The meal was simple in the extreme. A New Hampshire farm furnished few luxuries, and the dish of quince preserves had already been depleted by her.

"Mahala," she said with solemn determination, "those boys eat too much butter."

Mrs. Fernald flushed up to the edging of her cap. "I think I must be the judge of what my children eat at my table, Aunt Jane," she answered, not too gently.

Here Mr. Fernald interposed with a "soft answer." (He had never lost faith in the efficacy of these wrath turners, even on long repeated failure. As a matter of fact, to his wife's temper, a soft answer, especially an intentionally soft answer, was a fresh aggravation.) "The missionary, now, he praised our butter; said he never got any butter in China, or wherever 'tis he lives."

"He is a man of God," announced Miss McCoy. "If there is anybody on this poor earth deserving reverence, it is a missionary. What they endure for the Gospel is a lesson for us all. When I am taken I intend to leave all I have to the Missionary Society. You know that."

They knew it and said nothing. Their patience with her was in no way mercenary.

"But what I am speaking of is children," she continued, not to be diverted from her fell purpose. "Children ought not to eat butter."

"They seem to thrive on it," Mrs. Fernald replied tartly. And in truth both the boys were sturdy little specimens of humanity, in spite of their luxurious food.

"It's bad for them. Makes them break out. Bad for the blood. And self-denial is good for children. 'It is better to bear the yoke in thy youth.'"

The youth in question spread its butter more thickly, and ate it with satisfaction, saying nothing.

"Here, boys!" she suddenly assailed them. "If you will go without butter for a year--a whole year, till I come round again--I'll give each of you fifty dollars!"

This was an overwhelming proposition.

Butter was butter--almost the only alleviation of a dry and monotonous bill of fare, consisting largely of bread. Bread without butter! Brown bread without butter! No butter on potatoes! No butter on anything! The young imagination recoiled. And this measureless deprivation was to cover a whole year. A ninth or an eleventh of a lifetime to them respectively. About a fifth of all they could really remember. Countless days, each having three meals; weeks, months, the long dry butterless vista stretched before them like Siberian exile to a Russian prisoner.

But, on the other hand, there was the fifty dollars. Fifty dollars would buy a horse, a gun, tools, knives--a farm, maybe. It could be put in the bank, and drawn on for life, doubtless. Fifty dollars at that time was like five hundred to-day, and to a child it was a fortune.

Even their mother wavered in her resentment as she considered the fifty dollars, and the father did not waver at all, but thought it a Godsend.

"Let 'em choose," said Miss McCoy.

Stern is the stock of the Granite State. Self-denial is the essence of their religion; and economy, to give it a favorable name, is for them Nature's first law.

The struggle was brief. Holdfast laid down his thick-spread slice. J. Edwards laid down his. "Yes, ma'am," said one after the other. "Thank you, ma'am. We'll do it."

*

It was a long year. Milk did not take the place of it. Gravy and drippings, freely given by their mother, did not take the place of it, nor did the infrequent portions of preserves. Nothing met the same want. And if their health was improved by the abstinence it was in no way visible to the naked eye. They were well, but they were well before.

As to the moral effect--it was complex. An extorted sacrifice has not the same odor of sanctity as a voluntary one. Even when made willingly, if the willingness is purchased, the effect seems somewhat confused. Butter was not renounced, only postponed, and as the year wore on the young ascetics, in their secret conferences, indulged in wild visions of oleaginous excess so soon as the period of dearth should be over.

But most they refreshed their souls with plans for the spending and the saving of the hard-earned wealth that was coming to them. Holdfast was for saving his, and being a rich man--richer than Captain Briggs or Deacon Holbrook. But at times he wavered, spurred by the imagination of J. Edwards, and invested that magic sum in joys unnumbered.

The habit of self-denial was perhaps being established, but so was the habit of discounting the future, of indulging in wild plans of self-gratification when the ship came in.

*

Even for butterless boys, time passes, and the endless year at last drew to a close. They counted the months, they counted the weeks, they counted the days. Thanksgiving itself shone pale by contrast with this coming festival of joy and triumph. As it drew nearer and nearer their excitement increased, and they could not forget it even in the passing visit of a real missionary, a live one, who had been to those dark lands where the heathen go naked, worship idols and throw their children to the crocodiles.

They were taken to hear him, of course, and not only so, but he came to supper at their house and won their young hearts by the stories he told them. Gray of hair and beard was the preacher and sternly devout; but he had a twinkling eye none the less, and told tales of wonder and amazement that were sometimes almost funny and always interesting.

"Do not imagine, my young friends," he said, after filling them with delicious horror at the unspeakable wickedness of those "godless lands," "that the heathen are wholly without morality. The Chinese, among whom I have labored for many years, are more honest than some Christians. Their business honor is a lesson to us all. But works alone cannot save." And he questioned them as to their religious state, receiving satisfactory answers.

The town turned out to hear him; and, when he went on circuit, preaching, exhorting, describing the hardships and dangers of missionary life, the joys of soul-saving, and urging his hearers to contribute to this great duty of preaching the Gospel to all creatures, they had a sort of revival season; and arranged for a great missionary church meeting with a special collection when he should return.

The town talked missionary and thought missionary; dreamed missionary, it might well be; and garrets were ransacked to make up missionary boxes to send to the heathen. But Holdfast and J. Edwards mingled their interest in those unfortunate savages with a passionate desire for butter, and a longing for money such as they had never known before.

Then Miss McCoy returned.

They knew the day, the hour. They watched their father drive down to meet the stage, and tormented their mother with questions as to whether she would give it to them before supper or after.

"I'm sure I don't know!" she snapped at last. "I'll be thankful when it's over and done with, I'm sure. A mighty foolish business, I think!"

Then they saw the old chaise turn the corner. What? Only one in it! The boys rushed to the gate--the mother, too.

"What is it, Jonathan? Didn't she come?"

"Oh, father!"

"Where is she, father?"

"She's not coming," said Mr. Fernald. "Says she's going to stay with Cousin Sarah, so's to be in town and go to all the missionary doin's. But she's sent it."

Then he was besieged, and as soon as the horse was put up, by three pairs of busy hands, they came to the supper table, whereon was a full two pounds of delicious butter, and sat down with tingling impatience.

The blessing was asked in all due form--a blessing ten miles long, it seemed to the youngsters, and then the long, fat envelope came out of Mr. Fernald's pocket.

"She must have written a lot," he said, taking out two folded papers, and then a letter.

"My dear great-nephews," ran the epistle, "as your parents have assured me that you have kept your promise, and denied yourselves butter for the space of a year, here is the fifty dollars I promised to each of you--wisely invested."

Mr. Fernald opened the papers. To Holdfast Fernald and to J. Edwards Fernald, duly made out, receipted, signed and sealed, were two $50 life memberships in the Missionary society!

Poor children! The younger one burst into wild weeping. The older seized the butter dish and cast it on the floor, for which he had to be punished, of course, but the punishment added nothing to his grief and rage.

When they were alone at last, and able to speak for sobbing, those gentle youths exchanged their sentiments; and these were of the nature of blasphemy and rebellion against God. They had learned at one fell blow the hideous lesson of human depravity. People lied--grown people--religious people--they lied! You couldn't trust them! They had been deceived, betrayed, robbed! They had lost the actual joy renounced, and the potential joy promised and withheld. The money they might some day earn, but not heaven itself could give back that year of butter. And all this in the name of religion--and of missionaries! Wild, seething outrage filled their hearts at first; slower results would follow.

*

The pious enthusiasm of the little town was at its height. The religious imagination, rather starved on the bald alternatives of Calvinism, found rich food in these glowing tales of danger, devotion, sometimes martyrdom; while the spirit of rigid economy, used to daylong saving from the cradle to the grave, took passionate delight in the success of these noble evangelists who went so far afield to save lost souls.

Out of their narrow means they had scraped still further; denied themselves necessaries where no pleasures remained; and when the crowning meeting was announced, the big collection meeting, with the wonderful brother from the Church in Asia to address them again, the meeting house was packed in floor and gallery.

Hearts were warm and open, souls were full of enthusiasm for the great work, wave on wave of intense feeling streamed through the crowded house.

Only in the Fernalds' pew was a spirit out of tune.

Fernald, good man though he was, had not yet forgiven. His wife had not tried.

"Don't talk to me!" she had cried passionately, when he had urged a reconciliation. "Forgive your enemies! Yes, but she hasn't done any harm to me!. It's my boys she's hurt! It don't say one word about forgiving other people's enemies!"

Yet Mrs. Fernald, for all her anger, seemed to have some inner source of consolation, denied her husband, over which she nodded to herself from time to time, drawing in her thin lips, and wagging her head decisively.

Vengeful bitterness and impotent rage possessed the hearts of Holdfast and J. Edwards.

This state of mind in young and old was not improved when, on arriving at the meeting a little late, they had found the head of the pew was occupied by Miss McCoy.

It was neither the time nor the place for a demonstration. No other seats were vacant, and Mrs. Fernald marched in and sat next to her, looking straight at the pulpit. Next came the boys, and murder was in their hearts. Last, Mr. Fernald, inwardly praying for a more Christian spirit, but not getting it.

Holdfast and young J. Edwards dared not speak in church or make any protest; but they smelled the cardamum seeds in the champing jaws beyond their mother, and they cast black looks at each other and very secretly showed clenched fists, held low.

In fierce inward rebellion they sat through the earlier speeches, and when the time came for the address of the occasion, even the deep voice of the brother from Asia failed to stir them. Was he not a missionary, and were not missionaries and all their works proved false?

But what was this?

The address was over; the collection, in cash, was in the piled plates at the foot of the pulpit. The collection in goods was enumerated and described with full names given.

Then the hero of the hour was seen to confer with the other reverend brothers, and to rise and come forward, raising his hand for silence.

"Dearly beloved brethren and sisters," he said, "in this time of thanksgiving for gifts spiritual and temporal I wish to ask your patience for a moment more, that we may do justice. There has come to my ears a tale concerning one of our recent gifts which I wish you to hear, that judgment may be done in Israel.

"One among us has brought to the House of the Lord a tainted offering--an offering stained with cruelty and falsehood. Two young children of our flock were bribed a year ago to renounce one of the scant pleasures of their lives for a year's time--a whole long year of a child's life. They were bribed with a promise--a promise of untold wealth to a child, of fifty dollars each."

The congregation drew a long breath.

Those who knew of the Fernald boys' endeavor (and who in that friendly radius did not?) looked at them eagerly. Those who recognized Miss McCoy looked at her, too, and they were many. She sat, fanning herself, with a small, straight-handled palmleaf fan, striving to appear unconscious.

"When the time was up," the clear voice went on remorselessly, "the year of struggle and privation, and the eager hearts of childhood expected the reward; instead of keeping the given word, instead of the money promised, each child was given a paid life membership in our society!"

Again the house drew in its breath. Did not the end justify the means?

He went on:

"I have conferred with my fellow members, and we are united in our repudiation of this gift. The money is not ours. It was obtained by a trick which the heathen themselves would scorn."

There was a shocked pause. Miss McCoy was purple in the face, and only kept her place for fear of drawing more attention if she strove to escape.

"I name no names," the speaker continued, "and I regret the burden laid upon me to thus expose this possibly well-meant transaction, but what we have at stake to-night is not this handful of silver, nor the feelings of one sinner, but two children's souls. Are we to have their sense of justice outraged in impressionable youth? Are they to believe with the Psalmist that all men are liars? Are they to feel anger and blame for the great work to which our lives are given because in its name they were deceived and robbed? No, my brothers, we clear our skirts of this ignominy. In the name of the society, I shall return this money to its rightful owners. 'Whoso offendeth one of these little ones, it were better that a millstone be hanged about his neck and he cast into the depths of the sea.'"

A QUESTION

Why is it, God, that mother's hearts are made So very deep and wide? How does it help the world that we should hold Such welling floods of pain till we are old Because when we were young one grave was laid-- One baby died?

IS IT WRONG TO TAKE LIFE?

"Thou shalt not kill."

This is about as explicit as words can be; there is no qualification, no palliating circumstance, no exception.

"Thou"--(presumably you and I, any and every person) "shalt not"--(a prohibition absolute) "kill"--(take life: that is, apparently, of anything).

How do we read this? How apply it?

Some have narrowed it to assassination only, frankly paraphrasing the simple law, as "Thou shalt do no murder," and excepting the whole range of war-slaughter, of legal execution, of "self-defence" and "justifiable homicide."

Some have widened it to cover not only all human beings, but all animal life as well; the Buddhist and his modern followers sparing even the ant in the path, and the malaria-planting mosquito.

Such extremists should sit in sackcloth and ashes over the riotous carriage of their own phagasytes; ever ruthlessly destroying millions upon millions of staphyllococci and similar intruders.

Where should the line be drawn? And why? Especially why? Why is it wrong to kill?

If we hark back to the direct command, we find that it could not have been intended as universally binding.

"Whoso sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed," and all the explicit directions as to who should be killed, and how; for such and such offences, certainly justify the axe and rope of the executioner; and beyond that come numbers of inspired commands as to the merciless extermination of opposing tribes in which men, women and children were "put to the sword"--even to babes unborn. Killing seemed highly honorable, even compulsory, among the people on whom this stern command was laid.

Scholars teach us that the ten commandments were in truth not given to the Israelites until after the return of Hezekiah; that may alter the case a little, but assuredly if we are to believe the Old Testament at all there was no blame attached to many kinds of killing.

The Prophets and Psalmists particularly yearned to have their enemies destroyed, and exulted in their destruction.

In the teachings of Jesus we find another spirit altogether, but we have not therefore abrogated the old commandments, and the problem of this clear prohibition remains unsolved.

Those of us to-day who feel most keenly the evil of "taking life" are almost Buddhistic in attitude. They object to killing for food or killing in self-defence.

Fortunately for them, we have not many destructive wild beasts among us, thanks to the vigorous killing of our less scrupulous forefathers.

Some millennial dreamers suggest that the wolves and catamounts might have been tamed, if taken young; the natural resistance of the parents to the "taking" overcome by moral suasion, doubtless! Yes, it is conceivable that all the little snarling cubs and kittens might have been tamed, and taught to feed out of the hand--but on what?

In India some there may be who would emulate their saintly master, who offered his own body as food to a starving mother tiger; a sacrifice of less moment than appears, since he believed he would soon have another--that he had to have a great many--and that the sooner he got through with the lot the better.

From this unkind point of view his offering was much like that of a lady giving away a dress she is tired of, to promote the replenishment of her wardrobe.

The popular objection to killing, in India, results in the continuance of man-eating tigers and deadly serpents; which again results in their killing, in their untaught vigor, great numbers of human beings and other useful animals. The sum of the killings would be less if the killers were killed.

In our cooler land we have fewer poisonous reptiles and creeping things, yet insects there are which most of us slay with enthusiasm; the most sentimental devotee would hardly share couch or clothing with them! Surely no rational person objects to "justifiable insecticide"?

The most merciful will usually admit our own right to live, and therefore to kill in self-defence all creatures that would kill us. Where the line is drawn, however, by many earnest thinkers and feelers, is at killing harmless, inoffensive creatures for food.

The sheep we may shear, but not make into chops; the cow we may milk, but not turn into steaks and stews; the hen we may rob of her potential young, but neither roast nor fricassee.

It is no wonder, in view of the steaming horrors of the slaughter-house, that we recoil from killing; but is it the killing which is wrong in itself, or merely the horrors?

Let us first consider how this might be done; and then, if, at its best, the essential act of "taking life" is deemed wrong, we will consider that.

Suppose green pastures and still waters, the shade of trees, the warmth of the sun, the shelter of roof and walls; suppose protection and kind care, provision for the winter, and that we only shared the milk with the calves instead of barbarously separating the mother from her young. Calves might be bottle-fed, to satisfy their hunger, and afterward turned loose with the mother; they could not take all the milk then, and we might have the rest.

Suppose creatures thus living in an animal paradise, then gathered in small numbers, in local centers, and neatly, instantaneously and painlessly killed, any surgeon can tell us how. They could then be dressed, chilled and sent to larger centers for more general distribution.

What hardship, to them, is involved in this?

Die they must, some time, and by worse methods. In a wild state or a tame they must either be killed by something or die slowly of old age and incapacity.

Even if we nursed the toothless ox, and fed him with a spoon, he would not enjoy it.

We have to admit that in this whole round world all creatures die, and that in most cases, their lives are taken by others.

Looked at from a strictly scientific point of view, this is evidently the order of nature, her universal law. Looked at from a religious point of view, it is as evidently the will of God, His universal law.

Some postulate a sinless Eden past, before this killing habit began; and foresee a sinless Millennium to come, when we shall have outgrown it. These do not use their imaginations enough. Even if Edenic or Millennial tigers could digest grass and apples, are they therefore immortal? Is a species to live on forever in one representative, or one Platonic pair?

Because if we have life, as we know it, we have also reproduction, the direction for which precedes the picture of Eden; each pair being told "to increase and multiply and replenish the earth." Now for the imagination, to forecast results.

If the creatures fulfill this command, (and they do, diligently) the earth presently becomes replenished to a degree apparently unforeseen; unless, indeed, this law of mutual destruction be specially provided to meet that difficulty.

Life is multiple and interchangeable. Life continues on earth not in permanent radiating lines, but in flowing union; the forms combining, separating, growing, in and through one another.

Perhaps our error lies in fixing our minds in the eaten instead of the eater; dwelling on the loss of the killed, instead of the gain of the killer.

We say "all creatures eat one another," and it grieves us. Why not say "all creatures feed one another?" There is something beautiful in that.

Life, to each creature, is all time--all that he has any knowledge of--and living is a pleasure lasting all that time. Death, on the other hand, is but a moment, and even so is a pleasure to the wolf who eats, if not to the sheep who is eaten.

We, with our larger range of thought, and with our strange religions theories, have complicated and warped the thought of death by associate ideas. We place conscious fear before it, and load that fear with threats of eternal punishment.

We try to measure the wholesome facts of life by arbitrary schemes of later devising, and life seems dreary by contrast.

When we look at the facts themselves, however; see the grass green and thick for all its cropping; fish swimming in great schools, "as good as ever were caught"; the oysters peacefully casting forth their millions of eggs to make up for all that are eaten; this whole blooming, fruiting world of life and love; we find these to be the main things, the real prominent features of the performance; and death but a "lightning change artist," a quick transformation, in which one living form turns into another, while life goes on.

Meanwhile, in our human affairs it would be a good thing if we would develop as keen a sense of the responsibility of giving life as we have in taking it. We hold three powers in the life-process--a degree of choice and judgment as to who comes on the stage, some power to decide who shall go off, and when, and, most important of all, the ability to modify life while we have it.

Is it not singular that there should be so much sentiment about taking life and so little about giving it? We give life almost as thoughtlessly as the beasts below us. We are variously minded about taking it, killing many good men in war, and not killing many bad ones in peace, except an ill-selected few; but as yet we have no deep feeling about the struggles and sufferings of people while they live.

If we become religiously careful about the kind of people that are born, and about the treatment they get after they are born, it will make more difference to human happiness, and human progress, than would the establishment of a purely vegetable diet, the abolition of capital punishment, or even the end of war.

THE WORLD AND THE THREE ARTISTS

Three Artists found a World on their hands. It was their World and they were its Artists.

It was a Dull World, and needed Amusement.

It was a Hungry World, and needed Food.

It was a Tired World, and needed Inspiration.

It was an Ugly World, and needed Beauty.

Now the Artists were very powerful, having all these things in their gift.

The first was an Artist Pure and Simple, so he arose and gave the Dull World what he himself found amusing,--but the World was not amused.

"Stupid Beast!" said the Artist. "When I am dead it will find my work amusing!"

Then he gave the Hungry World what he thought good to eat,--but the World would not eat it.

"Ungrateful Wretch!" said the Artist. "When I am dead it will find this good food."

Then he gave the Tired World what he thought was Inspiration,--but the World was not Inspired.

"Dense Dolt!" said the Artist. "When I am dead it will recognize my Inspiration."

Then he gave the Ugly World what he thought was Beauty,--but the World did not find it Beautiful.

"Blind Brute!" said the Artist. "How terrible it is to be unappreciated! This Fool Incarnate can never realize what it is ignoring! And it will give me no reward! When I am dead it will see my Beauty!"

Now the World had its feelings, and did not enjoy the attitude of the Artist; so verily it gave him no reward. And he died. Nevertheless what he foretold was by no means fulfilled, for his work was for himself alone, and perished with him.

Then arose the second Artist, and he was not only an Artist, but a Merchant.

And he said, "I perceive that this my brother has died because he did not please the World, and it would give him no reward. I shall be wiser."

Then he studied the tastes of the World; Dull, Hungry, Tired and Ugly; a Neglected Child.

And he carefully catered to its ignorance, its prejudices and its childish tastes; he tickled with cheap pleasures, he gave it what its lower nature liked, and the Dull World found his Amusement amusing, and paid for it; and the Hungry World found his food palatable, and paid for it; and the Tired World received his Inspiration as if it were genuine, and paid for it; and the Ugly World eagerly grasped his poor prettiness as if it were Beauty, and paid for it; so the second Artist did not die--until he died; and then he was dead; and his work with him.

But the third Artist, who was also a Citizen, thought long of his task.

"I am an Artist," he said, "and this is my World. Of what avail is my Beauty if the World does not see it? How do I know that Worlds to Come will see it?--even if it lives? This World needs Beauty, now! If I work to express myself alone, I die, lean and angry; and my work dies with me. If I basely cater to this Neglected Child, I die, though fatter; and my work dies with me. How shall I feed the World?"

But he was an Artist, and very powerful, so he essayed his task.

He earnestly studied the needs of the World. "Shall I feed a lamb on beef?" said he, "or a cat on pie?"

By the exercise of his intelligence he learned the needs of the World, which were many and conspicuous; by the exercise of his Art he met them.

He gave it Amusement which was within reach of the tastes of that Neglected Child, yet which was in truth Amusing; and the World was Amused, and loved him.

He gave it food both palatable and nourishing; and the World was fed, and loved him.

He gave it Inspiration which struck to the heart, yet was drawn from Eternal Truth; and the World was Inspired, and loved him.

And he poured forth his very soul in Beauty; Beauty as simple as the common flowers the whole world loves, and as true as the stars in heaven, Beauty that ravished the soul of the Neglected Child, opened its eyes to Radiant Joy, and lifted it along the ages. And the World bathed in Beauty, and loved him. Also its taste improved continually under the influence of his Art. And the Artist was happy, for he fulfilled his mighty task.

"My glorious World!" he said; "What happiness! To be allowed to serve the World!"

And he watched it grow; well-nourished now, full of sweet merriment, strong in steady inspiration, rich in unfolding beauty.

For the World lived, and the Artist lived, and his work lived forever,--in the world.

IN HOW LITTLE TIME

In how little time, were we so minded, We could be wise and free--not held and blinded! We could be hale and strong--not weak and sickly! Could do away with wrong--and do it quickly!

Riches of earth, enough for all our keeping; Love in the heart, awake, no longer sleeping; Power in the hand and brain for what needs making; Joy in the gift of power, joy in the taking!

In how little time could grow around us A people clean and fair as life first found us! One with the under-earth, in peaceful growing, One with the over-soul, in doing, knowing.

Labor a joy and pride, in ease and beauty; Art that should fill at last its human duty; This we could make and have, were we not blinded! In how little time--were we so minded!

WOMAN AND THE STATE

[A Discussion of Political Equality of Men and Women. To be read in connection with chapter 12 of Our Androcentric Culture, in this issue.]

Here are two vital factors in human life; one a prime essential to our existence; the other a prime essential to our progress.

Both of them we idealize in certain lines, and exploit in others. Both of them are misinterpreted, balked of their full usefulness, and humanity thus injured.

The human race does not get the benefit of the full powers of women, nor of the full powers of the state.

In all civilized races to-day there is a wide and growing sense of discontent among women; a criticism of their assigned limitations, and a demand for larger freedom and opportunity. Under different conditions the demand varies; it is here for higher education, there for justice before the law; here for economic independence, and there for political equality.

This last is at present the most prominent Issue of "the woman question" in England and America, as the activity of the "militant suffragists" has forced it upon the attention of the world.

Thoughtful people in general are now studying this point more seriously than ever before, genuinely anxious to adopt the right side, and there is an alarmed uprising of sincere objection to the political equality of women.

Wasting no time on ignorance, prejudice, or the resistance of special interests, let us fairly face the honest opposition, and do it justice.

The conservative position is this:

Men and women have different spheres in life. To men belong the creation and management of the state, and the financial maintenance of the home and family:

"To women belong the physical burden of maternity, and the industrial management of the home and family; these duties require all their time and strength:

"The prosperity of the state may be sufficiently conserved by men alone; the prosperity of the family requires the personal presence and services of the mother in the home: if women assume the cares of the state, the home and family will suffer:

Some go even farther than this, and claim an essential limitation in "the female mind" which prevents it from grasping large political interests; holding, therefore, that if women took part in state affairs it would be to the detriment of the community:

Others advance a theory that "society," in the special sense, is the true sphere of larger service for women, and that those of them not exclusively confined to "home duties" may find full occupation in "social duties," including the time honored fields of "religion" and "charity":

Others again place their main reliance on the statement that, as to the suffrage, "women do not want it."

Let us consider these points in inverse order, beginning with the last one.

We will admit that at present the majority of women are not consciously desirous of any extension of their political rights and privileges, but deny that this indifference is any evidence against the desirability of such extension.

It has long been accepted that the position of women is an index of civilization. Progressive people are proud of the freedom and honor given their women, and our nation honestly believes itself the leader in this line. "American women are the freest in the world!" we say; and boast of it.

Since the agitation for women's rights began, many concessions have been made to further improve their condition. Men, seeing the justice of certain demands, have granted in many states such privileges as admission to schools, colleges, universities, and special instruction for professions; followed by admission to the bar, the pulpit, and the practice of medicine. Married women, in many states, have now a right to their own earnings; and in a few, mothers have an equal right in the guardianship of their children.

We are proud and glad that our women are free to go unveiled, to travel alone, to choose their own husbands; we are proud and glad of every extension of justice already granted by men to women.

Now:--Have any of these concessions been granted because a majority of women asked for them? Was it advanced in opposition to any of them that "women did not want it?" Have as many women ever asked for these things as are now asking for the ballot? If it was desirable to grant these other rights and privileges without the demand of a majority, why is the demand of a majority required before this one is granted?

The child widows of India did not unitedly demand the abolition of the "suttee."

The tortured girl children of China did not rise in overwhelming majority to demand free feet; yet surely no one would refuse to lift these burdens because only a minority of progressive women insisted on justice.

It is a sociological impossibility that a majority of an unorganized class should unite in concerted demand for a right, a duty, which they have never known.

The point to be decided is whether political equality is to the advantage of women and of the state--not whether either, as a body, is asking for it.

Now for the "society" theory. There is a venerable fiction to the effect that women make--and manage, "society." No careful student of comparative history can hold this belief for a moment. Whatever the conditions of the age or place; industrial, financial, religious, political, educational; these conditions are in the hands of men; and these conditions dictate the "society" of that age or place.

"Society" in a constitutional monarchy is one thing; in a primitive despotism another; among millionaires a third; but women do not make the despotism, the monarchy, or the millions. They take social conditions as provided by men, precisely as they take all other conditions at their hands. They do not even modify an existing society to their own interests, being powerless to do so. The "double standard of morals," ruling everywhere in "society," proves this; as does the comparative helplessness of women to enjoy even social entertainments, without the constant attendance and invitation of men.

Even in its great function of exhibition leading to marriage, it is the girls who are trained and exhibited, under closest surveillance; while the men stroll in and out, to chose at will, under no surveillance whatever.

That women, otherwise powerful, may use "society" to further their ends, is as true as that men do; and in England, where women, through their titled and landed position, have always had more political power than here, "society" is a very useful vehicle for the activities of both sexes.

But, in the main, the opportunities of "society" to women, are merely opportunities to use their "feminine influence" in extra domestic lines--a very questionable advantage to the home and family, to motherhood, to women, or to the state.

In religion women have always filled and more than filled the place allowed them. Needless to say it was a low one. The power of the church, its whole management and emoluments, were always in the hands of men, save when the Lady Abbess held her partial sway; but the work of the church has always been helped by women--the men have preached and the women practised!

Charity, as a vocation, is directly in line with the mother instinct, and has always appealed to women. Since we have learned how injurious to true social development this mistaken kindness is, it might almost be classified as a morbid by-product of suppressed femininity!

In passing we may note that charity as a virtue is ranked highest among those nations and religions where women are held lowest. With the Moslems it is a universal law--and in the Moslem Paradise there are no women--save the Houries!

The playground of a man-fenced "society"; the work-ground of a man-taught church; and this "osmosis" of social nutrition, this leakage and seepage of values which should circulate normally, called charity; these are not a sufficient field for the activities of women.

As for those limitations of the "feminine mind" which render her unfit to consider the victuallage of a nation, or the justice of a tax on sugar; it hardly seems as if the charge need be taken seriously. Yet so able a woman as Mrs. Humphry Ward has recently advanced it in all earnestness.

In her view women are capable of handling municipal, but not state affairs. Since even this was once denied them; and since, in England, they have had municipal suffrage for some time; it would seem as if their abilities grew with use, as most abilities do; which is in truth the real answer.

Most women spend their whole lives, and have spent their whole lives for uncounted generations, in the persistent and exclusive contemplation of their own family affairs. They are near-sighted, or near-minded, rather; the trouble is not with the nature of their minds, but with the use of them.

If men as a class had been exclusively confined to the occupation of house-service since history began, they would be similarly unlikely to manifest an acute political intelligence.

We may agree with Tennyson that "Woman is not undeveloped man, but diverse;" that is women are not undeveloped men; but the feminine half of humanity is undeveloped human. They have exercised their feminine functions, but not their human-functions; at least not to their full extent.

Here appears a distinction which needs to be widely appreciated.

We are not merely male and female--all animals are that--our chief distinction is that of race, our humanness.

Male characteristics we share with all males, bird and beast; female characteristics we share with all females, similarly; but human characteristics belong to genus homo alone; and are possessed by both sexes. A female horse is just as much a horse as a male of her species; a female human being is just as human as the male of her species--or ought to be!

In the special functions and relations of sex there is no contest, no possible rivalry or confusion; but in the general functions of humanity there is great misunderstanding.

Our trouble is that we have not recognized these human functions as such; but supposed them to be exclusively masculine; and, acting under that idea, strove to prevent women from an unnatural imitation of men.

Hence this minor theory of the limitations of the "female mind."

The mind is pre-eminently human. That degree of brain development which distinguishes our species, is a human, not a sex characteristic.

There may be, has been, and still is, a vast difference in our treatment of the minds of the two sexes. We have given them a different education, different exercises, different conditions in all ways. But all these differences are external, and their effect disappears with them.

The "female mind" has proven its identical capacity with the "male mind," in so far as it has been given identical conditions. It will take a long time, however, before conditions are so identical, for successive generations, as to give the "female mind" a fair chance.

In the meantime, considering its traditional, educational and associative drawbacks, the "female mind" has made a remarkably good showing.

The field of politics is an unfortunate one in which to urge this alleged limitation; because politics is one of the few fields in which some women have been reared and exercised under equal conditions with men.

We have had queens as long as we have had kings, perhaps longer; and history does not show the male mind, in kings, to have manifested a numerically proportionate superiority over the female mind, in queens. There have been more kings than queens, but have there been more good and great ones, in proportion?

Even one practical and efficient queen is proof enough that being a woman does not preclude political capacity. Since England has had such an able queen for so long, and that within Mrs. Humphry Ward's personal memory, her position seems fatuous in the extreme.

It has been advanced that great queens owed their power to the association and advice of the noble and high-minded men who surrounded them; and, further, that the poor showing made by many kings, was due to the association and vice of the base and low-minded women who surrounded them.

This is a particularly pusillanimous claim in the first place; is not provable in the second place; and, if it were true, opens up a very pretty field of study in the third place. It would seem to prove, if it proves anything, that men are not fit to be trusted with political power on account of an alarming affinity for the worst of women; and, conversely, that women, as commanding the assistance of the best of men, are visibly the right rulers! Also it opens a pleasant sidelight on that oft-recommended tool--"feminine influence."

We now come to our opening objection; that society and state, home, and family, are best served by the present division of interests: and its corollary, that if women enlarge that field of interest it would reduce their usefulness in their present sphere.

The corollary is easily removed. We are now on the broad ground of established facts; of history, recent, but still achieved.

Women have had equal political rights with men in several places, for considerable periods of time. In Wyoming, to come near home, they have enjoyed this status for more than a generation. Neither here nor in any other state or country where women vote, is there the faintest proof of injury to the home or family relation. In Wyoming, indeed, divorce has decreased, while gaining so fast in other places.

Political knowledge, political interest, does not take up more time and strength than any other form of mental activity; nor does it preclude a keen efficiency in other lines; and as for the actual time required to perform the average duties of citizenship--it is a contemptible bit of trickery in argument, if not mere ignorance and confusion of idea, to urge the occasional attendance on political meetings, or the annual or bi-annual dropping of a ballot, as any interference with the management of a house.

It is proven, by years on years of established experience, that women can enjoy full political equality and use their power, without in the least ceasing to be contented and efficient wives and mothers, cooks and housekeepers.

What really horrifies the popular mind at the thought of women in politics, is the picture of woman as a "practical politician;" giving her time to it as a business, and making money by it, in questionable, or unquestionable, ways; and, further, as a politician in office, as sheriff, alderman, senator, judge.

The popular mind becomes suffused with horror at the first idea, and scarcely less so at the second. It pictures blushing girlhood on the Bench; tender motherhood in the Senate; the housewife turned "ward-heeler;" and becomes quite sick in contemplation of these abominations.

No educated mind, practical mind, no mind able and willing to use its faculties, need be misled for a moment by these sophistries.

There is absolutely no evidence that women as a class will rush into "practical politics." Where they have voted longest they do not manifest this dread result. Neither is there any proof that they will all desire to hold office; or that any considerable portion of them will; or that, if they did, they would get it.

We seem unconsciously to assume that when women begin to vote, men will stop; or that the women will outnumber the men; also that, outnumbering them, they will be completely united in their vote; and, still further, that so outnumbering and uniting, they will solidly vote for a ticket composed wholly of women candidates.

Does anyone seriously imagine this to be likely?

This may be stated with assurance; if ever we do see a clever, designing, flirtatious, man-twisting woman; or a pretty, charming, irresistable young girl, elected to office--it will not be by the votes of women!

Where women are elected to office, by the votes of both men and women, they are of suitable age and abilities, and do their work well. They have already greatly improved some of the conditions of local politics, and the legislation they advocate is of a beneficial character.

What is the true relation of women to the state?

It is precisely identical with that of men. Their forms of service may vary, but their duty, their interest, their responsibility, is the same.

Here are the people on earth, half of them women, all of them her children. It is her earth as much as his; the people are their people, the state their state; compounded of them all, in due relation.

As the father and mother, together; shelter, guard, teach and provide for their children in the home; so should all fathers and mothers, together; shelter, guard, teach and provide for their common children, the community.

The state is no mystery; no taboo place of masculine secrecy; it is simply us.

Democracy is but a half-grown child as yet, one of twins? Its boy-half is a struggling thing, with "the diseases of babyhood"; its girl-half has hardly begun to take notice.

As human creatures we have precisely the same duty and privilege, interest, and power in the state; sharing its protection, its advantages, and its services. As women we have a different relation.

Here indeed we will admit, and glory in, our "diversity." The "eternal womanly" is a far more useful thing in the state than the "eternal manly."

To be woman means to be mother. To be mother means to give love, defense, nourishment, care, instruction. Too long, far too long has motherhood neglected its real social duties, its duties to humanity at large. Even in her position of retarded industrial development, as the housekeeper and houseworker of the world, woman has a contribution of special value to the state.

As the loving mother, the patient teacher, the tender nurse, the wise provider and care-taker, she can serve the state, and the state needs her service.

WHAT DIANTHA DID

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