If the theory that the higher faculties and the moral sense originated in the female and that these qualities are by her transmitted to offspring, then the conditions existing in the first half of the sixteenth century are easily explained; or if, as is clearly proved by the facts brought out by scientists, woman represents the constructive and combining element in human society without which organized society would have been impossible, the degeneracy observed after thirteen hundred years during which time women were wholly without influence and power is exactly what might be expected. Indeed it is not singular that with the disintegrating or destructive forces in command over the conserving or constructive elements that war and religion should have become the business of the world and that a state of society should have prevailed which was in strict accord with these conditions.
However, that the constructive element was not dead is shown by the mental and moral unrest which began to manifest itself in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Women began to learn the alphabet and in a weak way to demand concessions hitherto denied them. Many men of genius who like the jurisconsults of Rome had not been submerged by the degeneracy of their time defied their persecutors and secretly promulgated the scientific theories which were to revolutionize human thought.
The demand for freedom of conscience and for the release of the intellect and reason from the domination of bigotry and superstition constituted one of the first steps toward reform. Galileo, Bruno, Copernicus, and Harvey are notable examples of the revolt against the intellectual tyranny which prevailed.
It is not a little singular that at this time the throne of England was occupied by a woman and that her reign should have been the most brilliant that that country has ever enjoyed. It has frequently been said that the success of Elizabeth’s reign was due not to her greatness but to that of the statesmen whom she called about her. But even were this true, which it is not, it would not detract from her greatness. The innate qualities developed within Queen Elizabeth, namely genius and intuition, can alone explain the brilliancy of her reign.
It is to be doubted if the progressive principle has ever been wholly dead. That even during the darkest period of the Middle Ages the constructive element was still alive in Europe is shown in the fact that as early as the year 1215 the idea of individual human liberty had already been formulated. In the Magna Charta wrested from King John at Runnymede appears the following:
No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him or upon him send except by the legal judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell; to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.
Although a few attempts were made during the sixteenth century to better the conditions of the masses of the people, as all the institutions for the perpetuation of the slavery of the masses were firmly established, little was accomplished in this direction. That reforms move slowly is shown in the fact that as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century of the Christian era, the greater portion of the human race was in a state of bondage. Slavery existed in every quarter of the globe. In Russia, in 1855, there were forty-eight millions of serfs, and in Austria and Prussia the peasantry were nearly all slaves. In Hungary nine millions of human beings belonged to a subject class.
Although no slaves were owned in England, slavery still existed in her colonies. In the West Indies the whip was freely used, and prior to the year 1820 no voice had been raised against the flogging of women on the plantations. In Scotland, down to the last year of the eighteenth century, colliers and salters were slaves and bound to their service for life, being bought and sold with the works at which they laboured. Although America had put down the slave-trade, she still owned slaves, and continued to traffic in them until the year 1863.
The history of legislation during the historic period shows that it has ever been in the interest of the rich against the poor, the strong against the weak. In France, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, liberty was extinct. “The rich man could purchase for money the power to destroy those whom he hated.”264
The lawmakers of the age which we are considering were gentlemen landowners, and as such were able to exercise their cupidity in a degree which precluded all idea of justice to the poorer classes. The abuses of government, the corn-laws, the enormous tax on salt and on the various necessities of life, show somewhat of the extent to which the poor were systematically robbed by the rich.
The law passed in 1350, at Bannockburn, regulating the movements of the British workingmen, and which prohibited combinations among them, was in force until 1824. The evident object of this law was to repress the labourer and deprive him of his just earnings. Although this enactment was known to be oppressive, the working-classes were not possessed of sufficient influence to cause its repeal.
In England, women with their children worked in coal pits, and in the darkness, on hands and feet, dragged about wagons fastened to their waists by chains. Of this Mr. Mackenzie says:
Children of six were habitually employed. Their hours of labour were fourteen to sixteen daily. The horrors among which they lived induced disease and early death. Law did not seem to reach to the depths of a coal-pit, and the hapless children were often mutilated and occasionally killed with perfect impunity by the brutalized miners among whom they laboured. There was no machinery to drag the coals to the surface, and women climbed long wooden stairs with baskets of coal upon their backs.
In the factories, also, as late as 1832 children of six years of age worked from thirteen to fifteen hours daily. If they fell asleep they were flogged. Sometimes through exhaustion they fell upon the machinery and were injured—possibly crushed,—an occurrence which caused little concern to any except the mothers, who had learned to bear their pangs in silence. These children, who were stunted in size and disposed to various acute diseases, were also scrofulous and consumptive. In 1832 the recruiting surgeon could find no men to suit his purpose in the manufacturing districts.
Throughout Europe, the prevailing idea concerning the management of criminals seems to have been vengeance. One would scarcely believe, except on trustworthy authority, that at the beginning of the nineteenth century the English criminal law recognized 223 capital offences. Indeed, so strong was the feeling in favour of severity that Edmund Burke said he could obtain the assent of the House of Commons to any law imposing the penalty of death. If one shot a rabbit he was hanged; if he injured Westminster Bridge he was hanged; if he appeared disguised on a public road he was hanged, and so on. The hanging of small groups was a common occurrence—children of ten years being sometimes among the condemned.265
A visit to the Five-Sided Tower in Nuremberg, in which are still preserved various instruments of human torture, will give an idea of the extreme cruelty practised upon political offenders and heretics a century ago.
The “Holy Alliance” of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, which was formed ostensibly to insure peace and establish justice, but which in reality was entered into to suppress free speech, check the growing liberties of the people, and strengthen the belief in the “divine right of kings,” shows the obstacles which had to be overcome before any principle of justice and humanity could take root.
The history of industrial and economic conditions since the beginning of the eighteenth century is largely the history of the common people. The change from the Feudal system to that of the wage-earning régime may not, as far as the working class is concerned, be regarded as an unmixed blessing. Under Feudalism the “lord of the soil” was responsible for the maintenance and well-being of his vassals, while under the wage system the “captains of industry” assume no such responsibility. If the labourer chooses to accept the terms offered well and good, if he refuses he may starve; it is a matter of no concern to the employer, for, are there not plenty of labourers who stand ready to take his place?
That the labourer was no less a slave under the wage-earning system than he had been under Feudalism is shown in the fact that under the first named as well as under the latter he had not the right of free contract. He must take what was offered him or starve.
As is well known the repression of the mental activities and the low physical condition which for more than thirteen centuries had prevailed, prevented the seed sown in the sixteenth century from taking root among the masses of the people. Their instincts were those of the slave and two centuries were required to waken them from their lethargy. Finally, however, even among the class mentioned the constructive forces began to assert themselves. Free thought and to a certain extent free speech were established. With the further development of liberal ideas a belief in the Divine Right of Kings and in the principles underlying monarchial institutions became somewhat weakened. A few attempts were even made to establish republics. Because of the glimmering light of scientific truth put forth in the sixteenth century, ecclesiastical authority was no longer supreme.
Although many important steps had been taken to free men from the thraldom of the past, so firmly had the idea of woman’s inferiority been established that no thought of including her in the new régime was ever entertained.
Justice, equality, and liberty are subjects upon which man descants loudly and long. He talks glibly of his free institutions and even designates a number of his one-sided governments as republics, and this too notwithstanding the fact that women are still denied representation in the governments to which they owe allegiance, and that a large proportion of men are still within the grasp of economic slavery; all of which shows the extent to which the moral sense and the judgment have been dwarfed by prejudice and selfishness. Democracy is still a meaningless term—an ideal yet to be realized.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century such were the conditions surrounding women that an attempt on their part to extricate themselves from their legal and social bondage would have proved utterly futile. At that time women had practically no legal rights; even the right to control their own bodies was denied them. As woman was dependent upon man for support her sex-functions were controlled by him and the children which she bore belonged exclusively to him. He constituted the family—wife and children did not count. To a considerable extent these conditions still prevail.
Masculine law, masculine religion, and masculine ideas concerning the duties and uses of the female sex had made of woman a nondescript—a creature neither male nor female. Her mental constitution had become atrophied, the diluted reflections of men’s opinions having been substituted for the natural feminine instincts and ideas. Among the great mass of women the original feminine type had disappeared.
In process of time, however, women began slowly to awaken from the hideous nightmare which threatened to destroy the last remaining vestige of the instincts and ideas peculiar to the female constitution. In the beginning of the nineteenth century some of the educational advantages enjoyed by men began to be appropriated by women. Thus began the unrest which now extends over the entire earth.
About seventy years ago a movement was started by women to secure for themselves the right to self-government. Immediately all the prejudice which characterizes a sex-aristocracy was aroused. Ridicule, calumny, and even personal abuse were directed against all those who were intelligent enough or fearless enough to stem the tide of popular indignation.
For forty years, little or no progress was made toward securing the right of self-government for women. As late as 1870 a woman who openly avowed herself a suffragist was regarded not only as “bold and unwomanly” but as a dangerous person. The most strenuous opposition to the movement came from the clergy and the flocks over which they presided. Whenever church women were asked to consider the question of the equality of the sexes their unvarying reply was: “My bible forbids it.” Now that the history of Pauline Christianity is better understood its attitude toward the freedom of women needs no further explanation.
When the then existing mental conditions are recalled and especially when the religious prejudices of the time are considered the attitude manifested toward the proposed enfranchisement of women is not perhaps remarkable.
Although forty years ago biological science was in its infancy enough facts had at that time been discovered clearly to indicate the position which Nature intended woman to occupy. By the scientists of that time, however, the logical and unavoidable inferences to be drawn from these facts were wholly ignored. During the ages of man’s undisputed supremacy so deeply rooted had the idea of woman’s inferiority become that these newly discovered facts concerning her development could not be accepted—the old prejudices could not at once be uprooted.
We have already observed that whenever and wherever Mr. Darwin and other scientists of his time felt called upon to compare the relative importance of men and women such comparison has invariably been to the disadvantage of the latter and this too notwithstanding the fact that the evidence which they themselves have elaborated warrants no such conclusions.
Forty years ago the doctrine that woman has no independent existence, but that she is simply an appendage to man, was everywhere accepted and taught not only by ecclesiastics but by scientists as well. Woman was only a “rib” taken from the side of man.
None of the doctrines elaborated for the guidance of women was so explicit as those relating to the duties of wives. The cause for this is obvious. Earlier in this work the fact has been noted that our present form of marriage originated in force—that no other principle was involved in it than coercion on the one side and unwilling submission on the other.
So long as the original idea underlying marriage is retained, or so long as woman is recognized as the property of her husband and subject to his control, no matter what may be achieved by individual women, the belief in the inferiority of women as a class will continue. In other words so long as women remain economic slaves dependent upon their husband for support so long will their status remain unchanged.
“She is my goods, my chattels, my household stuff.”
There are in this country at the present time more than nine millions of women engaged in earning their own livelihood. Many of these women have families dependent upon them for support. The disadvantages under which they labour are realized when we remember that their competitors are their political and economic superiors and are therefore able to a considerable extent to dictate the conditions under which these women work; yet notwithstanding these unfavourable conditions this change in woman’s environment represents an important step in the evolutionary processes. By it women are learning that only through independence is self-respect possible.
We have already seen that whenever during the historic period, women have had an opportunity to rise they have never failed to rebel against the conditions imposed upon them. The women of Athens during the Periclean age, the Spartan women under Lycurgus, and the women of Rome during the time of the Antonine Cæsars are notable examples of this fact. Even the Chinese women are claiming the right to govern themselves. In these later years they are unbinding their feet and in other ways are defying the forces which in the past have prevented them from asserting their independence. The various examples of revolt among women have hitherto been carried on by single nations or by countries widely separated from one another. At the present time, however, the women of the entire world have risen to demand the freedom of their sex. However much those who favour the subjection of women may deplore this movement even the most stupid among them will surely not fail to recognize its importance.
The history of human society during the last four hundred years has for the most part been a struggle between the constructive elements developed in human society and the destructive or disintegrating forces which are the result of the unchecked egoism or selfishness developed in man during the ages in which woman has been subject to his will.