Now, suppose a woman would prefer to enjoy her mental capabilities to the full and develop these rather than to be the mother of a large brood; suppose she thinks she should be a developed woman first before daring to become a mother, whose right is it to object? If men prefer Kaffir wives there is a large assortment on hand. Squaws, both white and red, are to be had for the asking.
Whose right is it to decide that all women shall be squaws in mental development, in social position, in legal status and in political and economic relations, if all women do not choose to be such? Has a woman not the right to be a human being and count one in the economy of life before she is a mother—-quite aside from her maternal capabilities? If not, when and where did she forfeit that right? When and where did man get his? Every man has and maintains the right to be a man first—a unit, a responsible human being; after that—aside from it—he may, if he choose, become also a husband and a father. Is it not more than possible that the whole human race has been dwarfed and retarded and hampered in its upward struggle because of this unaccountable effort to climb one side at a time, because brute force and phenomenal egotism have always refused to place humanity on terms of equal opportunity and leave nature alone?
We are constantly informed that those who insist on equal opportunities, on equal status before the law for women are making an effort to subvert nature; that nature has done this and that and the other thing with and for women. Well if she has, then she will take care of the results in an open field. She does not need special, restrictive laws placed on the sex that she has already put under the ban of inferiority. If the superior sex cannot still more than hold its own without putting a high protective tariff on itself then how can it claim to be the superior sex? Nature has managed very well with the lower animals, giving them equal surroundings and opportunities. That nature is not allowed to manage for women is the very point we object to. Men have made all sorts of laws for and about women that are not made for and about men. Why not make laws and make them apply to the human being, leaving the sex of that human being out of the question? It is the special, restrictive, unnatural sex provisions in the laws and in the conditions of life that are objected to. No woman objects to nature's decree that she is a potential mother any more than men object to her decree that they are potential fathers.
It is the fact that men insist that women are this and nothing more—which nature did not say—to which women object. Nowhere else in nature does the male claim all of the other avenues of life as his special sex privilege, except alone the one which he cannot perform—that of maternity. The sexes stand on an exact equality as to opportunity until we come to man. The brain of each is developed to the extent of its capacity. The freedom and opportunity for food and pleasure are enjoyed by the sexes alike. When the desire for maternity is strong upon her is the only time that the female brute animal ever becomes a mother. She decides when she is a mere mother, and when she is an animal with all the rights and privileges of her genus. With the human race alone is one-half governed upon the theory, and its opportunities fitted to the idea, that the female is never a unit, never a human being, never a person, but that she is simply, solely and only a potential mother, whose one "sphere" even then is to be controlled and regulated as to time, place and conditions—not by nature, not by herself, as with the lower animals, but by the other half of the race, which holds itself as first human, individual, and with rights, duties, privileges and ambitions pertaining to him as such. His sex relation, his potential paternity, is truly his "sphere" also, but that it is his whole sphere he has never dreamed. There are women who look at life the same way, for the other half of humanity, and decline to read nature's teachings—are unable to read them—in any other way.
But aside from all this the doctor first claims that it is the intellectual development which cripples maternal capabilities and then he proceeds to give the reasons for the poor health of girls, which turn out to be bad ventilation in their schools, unwholesome sanitary conditions, injudicious or insufficient nourishment or physical and mental habits, and a lack of intelligent mothers and teachers, who dress and train the girls unhealthfully and in vitiated surroundings. How would boys fare under like conditions? Would the doctor say that it was the intellectual training which wrecked the health of the boys or would he say that it was the absurd conditions under which they got their training? Would he advise less mental work or less vile air; fewer studies or better light; more healthful clothing and food and exercise, or that the boys go homeland devote themselves to the sphere nature marked out for them—paternity?
Again the doctor appears to confuse society women with college women. As a rule they are totally distinct classes. The mere society woman who—so the doctor says—"wrecks her health in rounds of pleasure and bears sickly children or none," is, in nine cases out of ten, the exact opposite of the intellectual woman—the college-bred girl—who has learned before she leaves college the value of health and the obligation to herself and others to be well. It is true that certain of the fashionable schools which fit girls for society and for nothing else on earth call their girls educated; but, since no one else does, it were futile to confuse the two classes. The mere society girl, as a rule, is, so far as real mental development and higher education and capacity to think logically, are concerned, as truly a squaw as if she wore blanket and feathers. Indeed, this is what she does wear mentally. She should be a perfect wife for the men who wish wives to be physical and not mental companions; she would be second only to the Kaffir women in that she wears a trifle more clothing.
But even in her case, would it not be wise to infer that she has not necessarily physically incapacitated herself for maternity by her frivolous life, so much as that she does not care for children, and would find them troublesome to a brain, which holds nothing more serious and valuable than jewels and reception dates? And, if she did reproduce her kind, would this world be benefited? Why this constant cry for more children in a world crushed by the weight of sorrow, suffering and wrong to those already here? Until children can be born into better conditions let us be thankful that there is one class of women too narrowly selfish and another class too full of the sense of obligation to add very rapidly to this bee hive of misery and discontent and wrong.
The world needs healthier, wiser, truer children, not more of them, and until mothers are both educated and rank before the law as human beings, they will never be able to give that kind to the world. Just so long as men must get their brains from the proscribed sex, just that long will their minds remain an "infant industry" and be in need of a high protective tariff in the shape of restrictive laws on women to shield men from equal competition in a fair field as and with human units. The laws of heredity are as inflexible as death. Invariable, they are not; but so surely as there is a family likeness in faces, there are hereditary reasons for crime, for insanity, for disease, for mental and for moral imbecility, and women owe it to themselves, and to the world which they populate, not to allow themselves to be made either the unwilling, or the supine, transmitters or creators of a mentally, morally or physically dwarfed or distorted progeny.
"There has been so much discussion concerning the physical and mental differences between men and women, and the representatives of social science have expressed so many contradictory opinions regarding this question, that I feel it my duty, as a physiologist, to give my opinion on this important matter. Several fathers of the Church have entirely denied that woman has a soul. The canonists write: 'Woman is not formed after the image of God; and many philosophers in the same manner have considered women of small consequence. In a discourse 'concerning the education and culture of women,' Prof Sergi has followed the lead of this pessimistic school. The differences between the sexes, to which Prof. Sergi lias called attention, are doubtless significant for anthropology and physiology but, in my opinion, do not depend on the original condition of woman, but are caused by the barriers which have been raised by society regarding her destiny. In order to obtain an unprejudiced judgment, we must free woman from the yoke which man has placed upon her. We must observe her in the natural position, where she represents a particular language in the zoological scale. The ladies must now pardon me if I compare them with the lower animals, for in this way I can the better exalt them.
"As objects of comparison we will observe the most intelligent and faithful animals. With regard to dogs and horses we notice little difference between either the strength or the temperament of males and females. The hunter fears the lioness more than the lion, and the same is true of tigers and panthers. Prof. Sergi, in the above-named discourse, has expressed the following condemnatory opinion: "Neither in her physical nor mental capacities has woman reached man's normal scale of development, but on an average has remained so far behind that this sex seems to have come to a standstill in the general development of the race." This statement has surprised me in the highest degree. It appears to me that the marks of the human race, and the real physical characteristics which distinguish us from the animals, are feminine peculiarities. The principle has been adduced that the structure of the brain shows the abyss between man and animals. This is incorrect. There is no immeasurable difference between our brain and that of the gorilla, and the effects of the central cavities are shown only in the advancing development of the expressions of physical activity, not in their formation and character. A greater morphological difference between man and the animals is shown in the form of the pelvis. No physician, even twenty steps away, could mistake the pelvis of man for that of an anthropoid ape. The pelvis of woman is a new type which has appeared on the earth. Until now we have sought in vain for that animal which shall complete the chain between us and animals. It is striking: the narrow, high pelvis of the man is more ape-like than that of the woman. If the assertion is correct that the upright gait (on two feet) is the mark of distinction, and the noblest one for man, then woman certainly possesses the advantage of a pelvis particularly suitable for upright walking. Darwin has also demonstrated that female animals often revert to the masculine type, while the reverse seldom happens. More favorable conditions are necessary for the production of a female animal than a male, because the female embryo exhibits a greater fulness of life. Statistics have shown that under unfavorable conditions more men than women are born; also, male animals die more easily than female.
"Several judges of the woman question who consider that the brain of woman cannot compare with that of man, add that women should not enter into emulation with men in the mental domain lest they should lose the charm of their femininity, and because they should give themselves up completely to their vocation as wife and mother. This division of the work is certainly very useful for man and has greatly assisted him to his position of power, and has Pushed woman into the background. But it is incorrect that woman loses her womanliness by cultivating her mind."
[From the Deutsche Revue.]
Read before the World's Congress of Representative Women, Chicago, 1893
Ladies and Gentlemen:—As a student of Anthropology and Heredity one is sometimes compelled to make statements which seem to the thoughtless listener either too radical or too horrible to be true. If I were to assert, for example, that good men, men who have the welfare of the community at heart, men who are kind fathers and indulgent husbands, men who believe in themselves as pure, upright and good citizens, if I were to say that even such men are thorough believers in and supporters of the theory that it is right and wise to sacrifice the liberty, purity, health and life of young girls and women and, through the terrible power of heredity, to curse the race, rather than permit men and boys to suffer in their own persons the results of their own misdeeds, mistakes or crimes, I would be accused of being "morbid" and a "man hater." But let us see if the above statement is not quite within the facts.
I shall take as an illustration the words and arguments of a man who stands second, only, to our Chief Police officer in the largest city in the United States, and since he was permitted to present his arguments in the most widely read journals of the country it seems fitting that these opinions be dealt with as of unusual importance. All the more is this the case since they were intended to influence legislation in the interest of State-regulated vice.
Among other things he said:
"Of course there are disorderly houses, but they are more hidden, and less of that vice is flaunted, than in any other city in the world. Such places have existed since the world began and men of observation know that this fact is a safe-guard around their homes and daughters. Men of candid judgment, religious men, know, too, that they had ten thousand times rather have their live, robust boys err in this indulgence, than think of them in the places of those unfortunates on the island, whose hands are muffled or tied behind them. This is a desperately practical question with more than a theoretical and sentimental side. It ought to be talked about and better understood among fathers.
"Thank God that vice is so hidden that Dr. Park-hurst has to get detectives to find disorderly houses, and that thousands of wives and daughters do not know even of their existence. Such horrible disclosures as were made before innocent women and girls in Dr. Parkhurst's audience do vastly more harm in arousing their curiosity and polluting their minds than a host of sin that is compelled to hide its head. When I was Captain of the Twenty-ninth Precinct, I went with Dr. Talmage on his errand for sensational information for his sermons. I know, from observation and from reports which I was careful to gather, that never in their history were the places he described as thronged by patrons, largely from Brooklyn, or so much money spent there for debauchery as after those sermons."
Now I assume that this Police Inspector is a good citizen, father, husband and man. I assume that he is sincere and earnest in his desire and efforts to suppress crime and promote—so far as he is able—the welfare of the community. I assume, in short, that he is, in intent and in fact, a loyal citizen and a conscientious officer. I have no reason to believe that he is not doing what he conceives is best and right, and yet even he is quoted as advocating the sacrifice of purity to impurity, the creating of moral and social lepers in one sex in order that moral and social lepers or the ignorantly vicious of the other sex may escape the results of their own mistakes or vice. It impresses me anew that such teaching, from such authority, is not only the most unfortunate that can be put before a boy but that it goes farther perhaps than anything else can to confirm in men that conditions of sex mania which the Inspector says is more desirable should be cultivated by means of regularly recognized state institutions for the utter sacrifice and death of young girls than that it should end in the wreck of the sex maniac himself and in his own destruction.
But were our statesmen students of heredity, they would not need to be told that there is, there can be, no "safeguards around wives and daughters" so long as their husbands, fathers and sons are polluting the streams of life before they transmit that life itself to those who are to be "our daughters and wives."
But not going so deeply into the subject, for the moment, as to deal with its hereditary bearings; upon what principle his argument can be valid, I fail to see. Why is it better that some girl shall be sacrificed, body, mind and soul; why is it better that she shall be his victim than that he shall be his own? And then again, the problem is not solved when she is sacrificed. He has simply changed the form of his disease, and in the change, while it is possible that he has delayed for himself the day of destruction, he has, in the process, corrupted not only his victim but the social conscience, as well. Were this all perhaps it would be still thought wise to follow the advice of the Inspector—and alas, of some physicians—and continue to sacrifice under the bestial wheel of sex power those who are from first to last prey to the conditions of social and legal environment in which they are allowed no voice.
But this is not all. The seeming "cure" is no cure at all. It is simply a postponement of the awful day for the sex maniac himself and, worse than this—more terrible than this—it is the cause of the continuance of the mania not only in himself but in his children. He marries some honest girl by and by and thus associates, with the burnt-out dregs of his life, one who would loathe him did she know his true character and his concealed but burning flame of insanely inherited, insanely indulged, bestially developed disease. But he is now—under the shadow of social respectability and church sanction—to perpetuate his unfortunate mania in those who are helpless—the unborn. Heredity is not a slip-shod thing. It does not follow One parent and one alone. The children of a father who "sowed his wild oats" by the method prescribed by the Inspector (and alas, by social custom) are as truly his victims as is the pariah of humanity who is to be quarantined in some given locality, made a social leper and a physical wreck that he, personally, may be neither the one nor the other. But nature is a terrible antagonist. She bides her time and when she strikes she does not forget to strike a harder, wider-reaching, more terrible blow than can be compassed by a single individuality or a single generation. This is the lesson that, so far, we have absolutely refused to learn. I do not hesitate to take issue with the Inspector, therefore, and say that it is far better for society, far better for the fathers of unfortunate victims of sex mania, far better for the victim himself that he be "on the Island with hands muffled or tied behind him," where death to one will end the misery to all, than that by applying the remedy which the Inspector recommends, the result should be, as it is, a future generation of sex maniacs, scrofulous, epileptic or simply constitutionally undermined weaklings.
The boys who are encouraged to "sow their wild oats" and taught that it is safe to do so under State regulation should hear the reports of some of the students of hereditary traits, conditions and developments. There is to-day in an asylum not so far from the Inspector's own door but that its records are easy of access, one victim of this pernicious theory whose history runs thus: He was a gentleman of good social, financial and mental surroundings. He was a "young man about town." He possessed, (perhaps it was an hereditary trait) more consciousness of the fact that he was a male animal than that he was an intelligent, self-respecting human being who had no moral right to degrade another human being for his gratification, while he assumed to still retain a higher and safer plane than his companions in vice. He was, in brief, no better and no worse than many young fellows who—alas, that they are so taught by men who believe themselves good and honorable—"turn out to be good family men."
After his system was thoroughly inoculated, physically, mentally, and morally or ethically, with the tone, the condition, the trend of the life which the inspector, and many other good men, insist is unfit for the ears of women, but necessary to the welfare of men and "best" for them; after his life and flesh had this trend and absorption he married a lovely wife from a good family. All went well. Society smiled (this is history, not fiction), and said that rapid men when they did marry, made the best husbands after all. It said such men knew better how to fully appreciate purity at home.
Society did not state that there could be no purity in a stream where half of the tributaries are polluted. But society was satisfied to talk of "pure homes" so long as there was one pure partner to the compact, which resulted in the home. It does not talk of an honest firm if but one of its members is (privately and in his own person,) honest while he accedes to the dishonest practices of his associates. But society was satisfied. A child was born, society was charmed. Four more children came. Society said that this late profligate was doing his duty as a good citizen of the State. He is now about forty-seven years old. He is a "paretic" in an asylum, and, if that were all, then the inspector's theory might still stand, because he would say that at least the awful calamity had been staved off all these years while he had built a "pure" home and left to his country others to take his place. The facts are these: His oldest son is an epileptic, the second is a physical caricature of a man, the third is a moral idiot. He has no moral sense at all, while he is mentally bright. He delights in victimizing dogs, cats, or even smaller children. All things, in fact, which are in his power are his legitimate prey. Then there is a girl. In the phraseology of the doctor she "shows only the general, constitutional signs of her inheritance."
The youngest son is now less than seven years old; he is such a hopeless sex maniac even now that the parents of other children do not dare allow them to be alone with him for one moment.
In telling me of this case the asylum physician, himself a profound student of heredity, said of the child:
"He would shame an old Parisian debauchee. The Spartans were not so far wrong after all. They killed all such children as these before they had the chance to grow up and still further pollute the stream of life." And so our good citizen followed only the usual course prescribed by the inspector—and by society—and the result is (leaving out the horrible, necessary sacrifice of a woman—some woman or some number of women)—the result of the plan is this; a house of vice, (in a secluded quarter "for greater safety"); a few years of license which he believed to be his legitimate perquisite in the world and "no harm done;" the association of the later years of his wasted energies, and his pretense and vice-soaked life and flesh with the life of a pure girl, and then the legacy to society of five more sex maniacs, (who, being born in a wedlock, which, by its present terms, laws, and theories, still further develops sex mania in men and thereby implants the disease in each generation to be fought with or yielded to again); a doddering, drivelling wreck of a man in an asylum at the prime of his manhood; a worse than widowed wife with a knowledge in her soul which is an undying serpent as she looks in despair upon the five lives she has given, in her pathetic ignorance and trust. And his is not an unusual record. Of course its details are seldom known outside of the family and physicians. It is legitimate fruit of a tree which society in its avarice and ignorance and vice carefully fosters. It is the tree, the fruit of which fills our jails, mad-houses, asylums, poorhouses and prisons year after year, and yet we tend it carefully and keep its root strong and vigorous by exactly the methods recommended by the police inspector and by all believers in State regulated and State licensed vice, that is: It must be systematically continued for the good of "robust boys who might else be on the island with muffled hands. It must be kept in certain quarters and secret for greater safety to men, and that our wives and daughters may not hear of it."
Not hear of it until when? Not until the years come when the honest physician must tell her, if not the cause, at least the horrible facts, when it is too late for her to prevent the awful crime of giving life to the children of such a husband. We hold it a terrible crime to take life. Is it not far more terrible in such a case to give life? In the one instance the results to the victims are simply the sudden ending of a more or less desirable existence in a more or less comfortable world. In the other case it is assuming to thrust unasked upon helpless children a living death, an inheritance of pollution which must, and does, develop itself in one or another form as the years go by. Which is the greater, more awful responsibility, to give or to take life? The law says the latter.
Is it certain that heredity—nature's surest and least heeded voice—does not in many cases say the former? When society is wiser it will be a bit more like the Spartans. It will say: Far better that they be "on the island" than that they lay their fatal curse upon the world to expand and blight to the third and fourth generation, and, I believe, it was to be the "sin of the fathers" which was thus to follow the children, was it not? What was that sin? Are not its roots to be found in the very soil advocated as good by believers in State regulation and in a double standard of morals, and in the ignorance which they say is desirable for "our wives and daughters." Ignorance that such things exist as the secret, legalized, regulated slaughter (social, moral, and actually physical) of hundreds and thousands of one sex at the demands and for the gratification of the other?
Are there not sex maniacs in more directions than one?
Is not this very double standard theory in itself a sex mania?
Are not the men who advocate and the legislators who make laws which recognize these double moral standards, and who ignore the plainest fingerboards set up by nature in hereditary conditions—are not these, in a sense, one and all sex maniacs?
When they talk of "keeping our wives and daughters" pure and ignorant they do not seem to realize that the taint of blood which flows in the veins of that very daughter, which she herself does not understand, and which an ignorant mother does not dream of, and therefore cannot stand guard over, flows as an ever present threat that she shall be one of those very outcasts whom her own father is laboring to quarantine in darkness and oblivion!
Nature has no favorites.
Heredity does not spare your daughter, and yet men who plant the seeds of sex perversion in their own families have the infinite impudence to cast from their doors the blossom of their own tillage!
They go into heroics about being "disgraced." "You are no longer child of mine!" that rings in a thousand pages of literature, in one hundred cases out of one hundred and one should be met by the reply: This act of mine proves as no other could that I am, indeed, your daughter! Blood of your blood and flesh of your flesh! Nature has told your secret through me. Let us cry quits. You put the cursed taint in my blood when I could not protect myself. I am the one to complain, not you. Do not cry out for quarter like a very coward. Face your record made in flesh and blood. This polluted life of mine is Nature's reply to your life of license and uncleanness! I am Nature's reply to your uncontrolled passions—inside of marriage and out; I, the moral or mental idiot; I, the disease polluted wreck; I, the epileptic; I, the lunatic; I, the drunkard; I, the wrecker of the lives of others—I am your lineal descendant! You sacrificed others recklessly, by act and by law, to your desires and your arbitrary sex power; you cultivated a taint in your blood.
It is true that you took the precaution to transmit it through purity and ignorance to me. That very purity and ignorance of my mother served to save your peace of mind and enable you to take advantage of her for infinite opportunity for mischief. It, alas, could not save me, for I am your child also. Her ignorance was your partner in a crime against me, her helpless infant! Do not complain. Dislike my face as you will; presented to you in whatsoever form or phase of distortion it may be, I am your direct, lineal descendant! Build better! Or go down with the structure you planned for other men's daughters and in which you locked me before I was born!
If, because of their sex, men demand privileges, rights, emoluments, honors, opportunities and freedom, which they claim as good for and necessary to them and their welfare, while they insist that all these are not to be allowed to women—would be her damnation—are not these, also, sex maniacs? Has not humanity been long enough cursed by so degrading and degraded, so ignorant and so fatally wrong a mental, moral, social and legal outlook? I am attacking no individual. I am using an individual utterance on this subject simply to the better present the side of the case which is sustained by all of our present laws, conditions and male sentiment. I am wishing to present the reverse side of this awful picture. From man's point of view it is often presented—and in many ways. But once or twice have I ever seen the other side in print where it was looked at from a rational or scientific point of view.
A short time ago a book was written which touched, to a moderate degree, woman's side as well as the general human side of this problem. It was put in the form of a novel that it might appeal to a larger reading public than would an essay or magazine article. It had a tremendous sale, and the only—or the chief—adverse criticism made upon it was, that it pictured a type of father which either did not exist or was too rare to be even taken as an illustration in fiction. Now, it is this very type of father of which the Inspector speaks thus: "Men of candid judgment, religious men, know too, that they had rather have their live, robust boys err in this indulgence than think of them in the places of those unfortunates on the island, etc., etc."
That is exactly the point made by the book referred to, and which was criticised by one man as "morbid in its imaginings about fathers." Is this Inspector "morbid?"
He said: "This is a desperately practical question with more than a theoretical or sentimental side. It ought to be talked about and better understood among fathers."
And I agree with him perfectly so far.
It is indeed, a desperately practical question for both men and women and Anthropology and Heredity teach, in all peoples and in each succeeding generation, that the question has not been solved by the adoption of the double standard of morals!
It is so desperately practical that the land is literally covered with the deplorable results, in hospitals, in prisons, in imbecile asylums and in mad houses; but when he goes on to "thank God that this vice is hidden, and that thousands of wives and daughters do not know of even its existence," it impresses me that the Inspector is, in deploring the ignorance of fathers and commending it in mothers, attempting to still farther hedge boys about with a condition which inevitably makes of them sex maniacs in more directions than one. Is not his mother as deeply interested in her boy's welfare as is his father? Is it not to her eyes and wisdom his younger days are most left and to whose watchfulness, intelligence and information he must be trusted not to develop or acquire fatal habits? or if he has them in his blood as a heritage from his father, or from his father's father, by whom vice was looked upon as "safe" if only kept from the ears and eyes of wife and daughter; is it not imperative that the trained eye and mind of a woman who is not ignorant of nor blind to the very earliest indications that Nature has sent a message that there is a blood taint, so that, in so far as it is possible she may labor to modify and control his awful inheritance before it has him in a fatal grip?
Instead of this being the case it is advocated as desirable that she be even "ignorant of the existence of such vice!" It is due more to the fact that she has been ignorant than to any other one thing that, later on, the boy's developed hereditary curse, or his acquired bad habits, have so fixed themselves upon his young mind and body that the Inspector and the boy's father find themselves in a position to choose between a straight jacket for the boy himself, or first a wrecked and outraged womanhood and later on descendants that are marked with a brand that is worse than Cain's.
The Inspector says that such disclosures as Dr. Talmage's sermon before innocent women and girls do vastly more harm than a host of sin that is compelled to hide its head.
Now what is the implication? Did he mean to imply that those places have, since the sermon, been thronged with the "wives and daughters of Brooklyn?" If not, how did he know that it "polluted their minds?" Has he not jumped at that conclusion and cast a slur upon the wrong sex? the sex that did not "squander its money in patronizing these resorts?" Was not that a rather desperate effort to sustain an argument by a non-sequitur?
Are women's minds polluted by a knowledge of vice which they avoid intelligently rather than simply escape from ignorantly? Are ignorance and innocence the same thing? Did the Inspector believe that a knowledge of the degradation into which their sons are led and pushed by just such theories as these backed by a blind hereditary impulse which has no intelligent care from a wise parentage, did he believe that such knowledge would drive or lure "wives and daughters" into polluting vice? And is it not strange to hear of a condition of things which can be spoken of as good and desirable for boys and men which is in the same breath depicted as pollution even to the ears of women? Can good women live with these same men and not be polluted? How about the children?
Man has for ages past, claimed to be the logical animal. Beasts have no logic at all, and in this regard woman has been gallantly classed, if not exactly with the beasts, certainly not with man. We may say she has been counted by him as a sort of missing link. She had logic—if she agreed with all he said. Otherwise she was an emotional, irrational, unclassified creature.
Now, when it comes to dealing with his fellows, man has—in the main—a fair amount of reason and logic; but the moment he is called upon to think of woman as simply a human being like himself, to deal with and for her as such, to give her a chance to do the same with, and by, and for herself, that moment man becomes an emotional, irrational sex maniac. He is absolutely unable to look upon woman as first of all, a free individuality, a human being on exactly the same plane as himself. She is instantly "wife," "daughter," or victim to his mind always. Never for one instant does he contemplate her as an entity entitled to life and liberty, for, and because of herself. Always it is her relation to him that he sees and deals with—and alas for his theories of justice, gallantry or right—always it is as his subordinate, for his use, abuse, or pleasure, that he thinks of and plans for her.
Why confine gilded houses to one quarter? To keep their vicious inmates away from "our wives and daughters, and the streets which they are on," says the Inspector. But that is making sex irregularity a reason for restricting liberty of residence and resort—even of promenade and pleasure. That is to say, it restricts the liberty of one party to the vice—to the irregularity of sex relations. And unfortunately it is the wrong party who is restricted to compass the object claimed! The one whose vice can and actually does injure—the wife and daughter—(the pure woman who is his victim in marriage, and the daughter who is his victim in heredity) the one who can do infinite wrong, is left to roam at large!
It is the wrong partner in vice from whom State regulation seeks to "protect" "our wives and daughters." It is the one who can do the intelligent wife or daughter no harm whatever!
Man, we are told, is the logical animal. Why not apply a bit of logic right here? Why not set a watch on and restrict the one who does the real and permanent harm to the race?
Men claim that it is necessary to their health, happiness and comfort to sacrifice utterly the characters, health, lives, and even liberty of locomotion of thousands of women every year. This is simply infamous and Nature teaches its infamy and unnaturalness.
From the protozoan to the highest beast or bird there is no distinction of right, or opportunity or privilege as to the occupation, life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness anywhere in nature between the sexes until we reach the one species of animal where one sex has been subordinated to the other by artificial industrial conditions—by financial dependence.
Now, it so happens that as civilization goes on, Nature is taking a most terrible revenge upon the human race for this sex perversion. Asylums multiply, weaklings abound, criminals and lunatics blossom out from heretofore honored ancestry. Nature is a terrible antagonist. Having the power, man may pollute the fountain of life if he will, but Nature revenges herself on him still.
He may cover his vice with the shimmer of gold, but the curse of the serpent is there as of old. He may bind up the eyes of justice and right; but he learns at the last 'tis a desperate fight. A cover for vice in the father may be as fatal as ignorant maternity. Combined they sow broadcast on the air the horrors of life and breed its despair. It is to the "ignorance of our wives and daughters" on these points, combined with the silence of law-protected vice for men and "regulated" infamy for women that is due the possibility of passing in some states a bill to reduce to ten years the "age of consent" at which a girl is held legally responsible for her own ruin. If there was one good woman in the legislature no such bill would have a ghost of a chance to pass, or be kept from the public knowledge and rushed through a "secret session." Yet fathers of daughters pass such bills!
Is it true, after all, that men are not so good protectors of women as is woman of her sister? Ten years of age! Why, a girl is a baby then! Think of your own little girl at ten! Do not dare to stop thinking and talking and writing on the subject until such infamous laws are an impossibility!
Do not allow any one to make you believe that it is not "modest" or becoming for a woman to know about—and fight to the bitter death—any and all such laws! You have no right not to know it! You have no right to dare to bring into this world a child who shall be subject to such a law! It seems beyond belief but it is true. And then men talk of "protecting" women! Men who hold that a girl is not old enough to give lawful consent to lawful marriage or to the sale of property until she is 18 years old, say she is, at the age of ten, to be held old enough to give consent to her own eternal disgrace, ruin, degradation!
That such atrocious acts are possible is largely due to the fact that "our wives and daughters" do not know these things. The ignorance of one sex in all the vital affairs of life coupled with its financial dependence upon the other sex has gone far to make of all men sex maniacs and of so many children the victims of a polluted ancestry and the future progenitors of an enfeebled race.
A famous physician who is an expert in these matters says in one of his articles, read before his brother practitioners: "There are few families in this country not tainted with one or another form of sex pollution. If it is not physical in its demonstrations it is mental. Often it is both, and to the trained eye, and thought, of a student of anthropology and heredity, the present outlook is pitiful, indeed."
And again he says—and remember that it is not said by a woman about man. It is the serious warning of a famous expert to his fellows who were to meet and guard, in their profession, against the hereditary results of just the sort of legislative provision which has gone far to make of man the sex maniac he is. He said: "The wild beast is slumbering in us all. It is not necessary, always, to invoke insanity to account for its awakening." And if you will take the trouble to understand those few sentences by a great specialist you will have found the whole of my essay a mere illustration.
In discussing any question which involves the welfare and happiness of people who live to-day, or are to live hereafter, I think we may take it for granted that we must consider it in the light of conditions now existing or those likely to exist in the future. We must clearly understand to what domain the question fairly belongs; whether it is a question of vital importance between human beings in their relations to each other, and whether it is a matter in which the law is the final appeal. We may fairly assume that the questions of marriage and divorce have to do with this world only. Indeed, that point is yielded by the marriage service adopted by the various Christian churches when it says, "until death us do part," and by the reply said to have been given by Christ himself, to the somewhat puzzling query put to him as to whose wife the seven times married woman would be in heaven.
According to the record, he evaded (somewhat skilfully it must be admitted) the real question; but his reply at least warrants us in saying that he held the view that the marriage relation had nothing whatever to do with another life, but belonged to the province of this world only, and the necessities and duties of human beings toward each other here.
This point is conceded, too, by every church when it permits the widowed to re-marry, and gives them clerical sanction.
Therefore the religious and the civil basis of discussion are logically on the same premises, and in America, at least, where there is no contest as to the established fact that all divorces must be legal and not ecclesiastical, it is clear that the law does not recognize religion at all in the matter. While a religious marriage service may hold in law, a religious divorce would be illegal, in fact, fraudulent. It is conceded on all sides then, as we have seen, that marriage is a matter pertaining strictly to this world. It affects the happiness or misery of men and women in their relations with each other, and not at all in any assumed relation with another life, or a supposititious duty to a Deity.
This would logically take marriage, as it has already taken divorce, out of the hands of the clergy, since religion and its duties are based primarily and necessarily upon the relations of human beings to another life and to a supernatural or Supreme Being. The terms of marriage and divorce—so far as the public is concerned—are questions of morals and economics.
That is to say, if there were but one man and one woman in the world it would be for them to say whether they would be married at all, or—having been married—whether they would stay married, if they discovered that the relation was productive of misery to one or both. They could divorce themselves at will without injury and without fear. But since humanity is associated in groups constituting what is called society or the state, and since under present conditions men are the chief producers and owners of wealth and the means of livelihood, the support of women and children is a matter which affects the welfare of all so associated, in case the parents separate. The question of divorce is, therefore, partly in the field of economics and has to do with the general welfare. This being the case, law and not religion rightly regulates its terms. People marry because they believe that it will promote their happiness to do so. I am talking now of ordinary people under ordinary circumstances, and not of those victims of institutions—such as kings and princesses—who are married for state reasons. Nor am I writing of those still greater victims who are taught that it is their "duty" to marry in order to produce as many of their kind as possible in a world already sadly overpopulated by the very class thus influenced and controlled by greed and power. That is to say, they are so taught by those who are benefited by the unintelligent increase of an ignorant population.
Since marriage is the most important, solemn, aed sacred contract into which two people can enter, and since it affects—or may affect—others than themselves, the State requires that it be public, that the form of contract be legal and that its terms be respected by both parties, to the end that others may not be deceived or left helpless.
But if the parties to this contract learn to their sorrow that the association is productive of misery, if they grow to loathe each other, if instead of happiness, it results in sorrow or ill health, then surely the State is not interested in forcing those two people to continue in a condition which is opposed to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is however, concerned in the terms of the separation since these do or may affect others than the two principals, and since one or both of these, having entered into a contract (in which the State was a witness) and now being desirous of terminating said contract, may be defrauded in a manner which vitally affects society. It can hardly be claimed that society is benefited by forcing two people to live in the same house and become the parents of children, when these two people have for each other only loathing or contempt. If it cannot benefit society, then who is benefited by the forced continuance of the marriage relation? The children? Can any rational person believe that it is well to rear children in an atmosphere of hatred, of contention, of rebellion?
Do not our penal institutions answer this question? Are the inmates of these from homes where harmony reigned? Statistics show plainly that they are not; and they also show that an enormous per cent, of them come from the families of those who are not allowed by their church the relief of divorce from bonds grown galling. Children conceived by hatred and fear, overpowered by the lowest grade of passion known to the world (which cannot be called brutal, because the brutes are not guilty of it), bred in an atmosphere of contention, deception, and dread, are fit material for, and statistics prove that they are the class from which are recruited the inmates of, the reformatory and penal institutions.
Is it fair to a child that it be so reared? Is it not right—is it not the duty of the State to secure, so far as it may, quite the opposite conditions of life for its helpless future citizens? Are the highest and best types of character bred in discord? Is the State interested in the high character of its future citizens? All these questions and many others are involved.
But setting aside these most important features I would like to ask who is benefited by keeping together those whom hate has separated? The wife? Not at all. She is simply degraded below the frail creatures of the street whom men deride. She becomes the helpless instrument of her own degradation. The woman of the street may own herself, she may change her life, she may refuse to continue in the course which has lost her her self-respect. The unwilling wife is helpless. She has lost all. She has no refuge. She is a more degraded slave than ever felt the lash, for her slavery is one which sears her soul and will, if she becomes a mother, sear the bodies and souls of children borne by her unwillingly.
It can hardly be urged that it could add to the dignity or honor of womanhood for a tie to be indissoluble which in itself, under such conditions, is a degradation and an insult. Take for example a drunken, a dissolute or a brutal husband. Can it be said to strike at anything dear or noble for womankind that some wife is absolutely freed from such companionship? That she be no longer forced to bear his society or even his name? Surely no good end can be served by the outward continuance of a tie already broken in fact. No one can be made better, no one happier. If it is urged that a God is to be considered, surely such a state of things could hardly excite his pleasure or admiration. If marriages are made in heaven those that prove a misfit—so to speak—can scarcely be claimed by believers in an all-wise ruler to emanate from there. Religious people will, I fancy, be the last to assert that wrong had its source in such a locality; while people who look upon this question as wholly outside of sacramental lines will be slow to see beauty or good in a relation which is a servitude and a degradation on the one side and a brutal domination on the other.
How does the question stand then? The wife is degraded, the children are brutalized—are born with evil tendencies—a God can hardly be overjoyed; society is endangered and robbed, is deprived from its very cradle of its inalienable right to happiness. Who is left to be considered? The husband?
Would any man worthy the name wish to be the husband of an unwilling wife? If he has a spark of honor or manhood in him could such a relationship, held by force, give him happiness? Would it not be unendurable to him?
If he is so far below the brutes in his relationship with his mate that he can hold his position only by force is he a fit father of children? Is the State interested in reproducing his kind?
It is true that there are several reasons why divorce is far more important to women than to men—notwithstanding which fact the question is usually discussed in the Press and Legislature by men only, the other interested party not being supposed to have enough at stake to be consulted or heard in the matter at all. But it is also true that an uncongenial marriage deprives a man of all of the best that is in him; it reduces his home to a mere den of discomfort and wretchedness; it forces him to be either a hypocrite at or an absentee from his own hearthstone and deprives him of the blessedness and sympathy—the holy tenderness and beauty—that should be the star in the crown of every man entitled to the name of husband and father.
But he still owns his own body. He cannot be made an unwilling father of timid, diseased, or brutalized children; he is not a financial dependent. For these and other reasons an unhappy marriage can never mean to a man what it must always mean to a woman.
There is an argument frequently put forward that divorce is wrong and unfair to the children of those so separated in case the divorced parties remarry and other children are added to the family. One great Prelate asked in his article on this subject: "Can we look with anything short of horror upon such a condition of things? Here is a family, we will say, composed of the children of three divorced fathers—all by one mother."
This is an extreme and not a pleasing case, we may admit; but suppose the divorce were by death would the distinguished Prelate be so shocked? Is it especially uncommon, indeed, for the most devout men and women to marry three times? Are "half" brothers and sisters and "step" children a subject of moral shock to the most rigid religionists? Jesus appeared to approve of a woman marrying seven times. How about a mixed family there? Does the distinguished Prelate take issue with his Lord? No, the whole question hinges on the continuance of the life of the parties separated or divorced. If one of them dies the mixed family relation is not counted either a sin or a shame. If they live and the divorce is granted by law instead of by nature it is pronounced both.
In whose interest is this distinction maintained? We have seen that it is not for the honor of the wife that a loathsome marriage relation be indissoluble, that it can lend neither dignity nor happiness to the husband, that it is one of the fruitful causes of diseased and criminal childhood and that it is, therefore, necessarily, a menace to society.
Legally, morally, economically, then, it is a mistake, and it is productive of great misery. Who then is benefited? Why is the attempt so strongly made to revise the laws and check the growing liberality in divorce legislation?
Who are the movers in that direction and upon what do they base their arguments? What is the final appeal of these combatants? I shall answer the two last questions first. The orthodox clergy and their followers, basing their arguments on the Bible as the final appeal, demand that this reform go backward. Why?
Because their creeds and tenets have always claimed that marriage is a sacrament and not a legal contract, that it is or should be under the control of the clergy, and that the Bible and St. Paul say so and so about it. The Catholic Church has, by keeping control of the marriage of its believers, made sure of the children—their education—and therefore insured to itself their future adherence. It has perpetuated itself and its power by this means. It is, therefore, not difficult to see why that church so warmly opposes any movement which can only result in disaster to its growth and power. Her communicants are taught that it is their duty to increase and multiply, and this in spite of the fact that poverty and crime, want and ignorance stare in the face a large per cent, of the very class which it is thus sought to swell. The Catholics are the most prolific and furnish by far the largest per cent, of both paupers and criminals of any other class of the community. With them marriage is a sacrament; divorce is not allowed, or if allowed, remarriage is prohibited. Children are born with astounding frequency of subject mothers to brutal fathers. They are bred in a constant atmosphere of contention, bickering, and in short, warfare. The result is inevitable. Contest—war—brings out all the worst elements and passions in human nature. This fact is well understood where war is conducted between large bodies of men; but in such case there is supposed to be a motive—some patriotic principle involved to stir and call out, also, some of the better nature; but in the petty warfare of the wretched household there is nothing to redeem life from the basest.
But suppose all this is true, say the advocates of the forced continuance of the marriage relation; the Bible—our creeds—teach us to refuse the relief of divorce, and we are bound at any cost to sustain the indissolubility of the marriage bond. True, for those who accept these creeds or the Bible as a finality; but to those who do not, the State owes a duty. Church and State are separated in America, it is claimed. A magistrate can marry a man and woman, just as he can draw up another contract. When the State went that far it told the people that it did not hold marriage as a sacrament. It then and there took the ground that it was a legal contract, and had no necessary connection with religious belief or observance. It logically follows, then, that if the State deals with marriage as a thing not touched by religious belief or Biblical injunction, that the question of divorce—the terms of the contract—are also quite outside of the province of the clergy. This being the case, it appears as futile and as foolish to discuss this question—making of it a religious one—from the basis of the creeds or the Bible, as it would be to discuss the rate of interest on money or the wages per day for labor, from the same outlook.
Believers in the finality of Biblical teaching are at liberty to hold their marriages as indissoluble, but have no right to insist upon forcing their religious dogmas upon others, nor to attempt to crystalize them into law for those who believe otherwise. No doubt the Bible gave the best light of the Jews, in the day in which it was written, on these and other subjects. We are quite willing to suppose that the various creeds and usages of the churches did the same, for the people whom they represented, but the creeds and the Bible have nothing whatever to do with the social and economic problems of our day, nor with the legal questions of our time.
The more they are dragged into places where they do not belong, the more it is discovered that "revision" is necessary. The old creeds and the Bible are fast undergoing revision and are recut to fit the people and the present. It is quite impossible to revise and recut the people and the present to fit the old creeds and the literature of the Jews.
Let us have done with such trifling with the serious problems of the day. It is not at all a question of whether St. Paul said or thought this or that about divorce. It is not at all important what some dead and gone Potentate said; the question before us is: What is best for society as it is now? Indeed it appears to me futile to discuss this subject at all if it is to be done from a theological basis. Every fairly intelligent person knows what the church teaches in the matter. One paragraph and a half dozen Biblical references with a notable name appended is all the space necessary to consume. We all know that in substance the Catholic church's answer to the question "Is Divorce wrong?" is emphatically, "Yes."
We are also aware that that church revises its opinions more slowly than does any other.
It is equally well known to the intelligent reader that the variations from the emphatic Yes of the Catholic church, run the scale in the Protestant denominations from a moderately firm yes to a distinctly audible no. Given the denomination and a slight knowledge of its history—whether it claims to be infallible and divine, as the Catholic and Episcopal, or only partly so as the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregational, or whether as the Unitarian and Universalist they claim to be human only—and you are prepared to state what the adherents of those churches will hold as to the marriage and divorce questions without resort to long papers or circumlocution. Now, for the various sects to teach or believe what they please on this and other subjects is their undoubted right so long as they do not attempt to control other people in matters which are outside of the province of the church, and so long as their own adherents are satisfied to abide by the decisions of the communion to which they belong.
The question is, then, what is best for society as it is and as it is likely to be? What is best for society as it is now? Who is benefited or who harmed by the continuance of a loathesome relationship? Is the State and are the people interested in refusing to allow two people to correct a mistake once made? Is it for the good of anyone to make mistakes perpetual?
I repeat that it is a question in economics and morals. It has nothing whatever to do with religion.
Let us keep our minds clear of rubbish, and above all let us request that our legislators do not tamper with a question of such vital importance to women, in any manner (as is just now proposed) to crystalize the divorce laws into national form and application, until women be heard in the matter, freely and fully, without fear or intimidation. If it were proposed to make a national law for railroads without giving a hearing to but one side of the question; if it were suggested that Congress pass an educational bill of universal application without permitting any but its friends to be heard; if a general measure to control interest on money were up, and none of the money-lenders were given a hearing—only borrowers—there would be a great stir made about the injustice and inequity of such legislation. But it is deliberately proposed to pass a national marriage and divorce law, to regulate the one condition of life which is absolutely vital to women under present conditions, and to make this law a part of the national Constitution, without taking the trouble to hear one word from her on the subject. Let us agitate this question thoroughly. Let us discuss it on the basis where it belongs; where our laws have already put it—the economic, and moral, and social basis. Let us clear the track of both sentimentality and superstition. Let us hear from both sides—from both parties interested. We do not drag religion into the interstate commerce debate. When a bill comes up for street-paving, nobody inquires what kind of stone St. Paul was interested in having put down. When the Chinese bill is before us, it is not necessary to know what St. Sebastian thought of the laundry business. Their views may have been sound; but they do not apply. I repeat, therefore, let us keep to the subject, keep the subject on the basis where it belongs, have our conclusions at least blood relatives of our premises, and let us hear from both sides of the fireplace. And finally, let us discuss this matter thoroughly but let us keep clear of passing a national law until both parties to the contract be heard, not only in the press, but in the legislative deliberations.
A recent writer of one of the ablest and clearest papers yet contributed on this subject, in arguing in favor of an amendment to the Constitution, which shall make divorce laws uniform, says: "Let it clearly be shown that Congress can best legislate in the interests of the whole people (the italics are mine) upon the subject, and the people, and their representatives, the legislative assemblies, can be trusted to authorize it." It does not occur to even this able writer that half of the "whole people" will have no representation in either the legislative assemblies nor in Congress, and that on this subject above all others, this unrepresented half has far more at stake than has the other, and that when an amendment to the national Constitution is accomplished, it is a very much more difficult thing to correct any blunder it may contain, than it would be if the blunder were not made a part of that instrument.
All men appear to agree that marriage is preeminently woman's "sphere." Certainly under existing conditions, and under conditions as they are likely to be for some time to come, it is the one field open to her—it is her "lot." At present she has nothing to say as to the laws which control—as to the terms of this single contract of her life—the one disposition she is free to make of herself and still retain her social status and secure support. It would seem only humane to place no farther thorns in her path. Until she has a voice—is represented—the "whole people" cannot amend the Constitution in respect to marriage and divorce—in respect to the "one sphere" which all men concede is woman's one peculiar right.
No laws on these subjects—above all others—should be crystalized into national form and appended to the Constitution until it is done by the help and with the consent of the half of the people whom it will most seriously affect.