The Economic Independence of Women

Nowhere does a human being escape compulsion. Even were he alone in the world he would be forced to obey the physical laws governing gravity, heat, cold, hunger and disease. No matter what his desires might be, he would find himself limited and constrained by fixed laws, the inexorable penalties of which he could escape only by obedience. If the man were not alone, then each one of his companions would limit his freedom, and he would limit each one in the group, if they were to live together in peace and efficiency; and yet each of the man’s companions would help to free him from the tyranny of physical forces, from the social pressure of others, and even from the bondage of his own nature.

Independence is thus an ideal to be achieved only through obedience. It begins in self-subordination and reaches its finest realization in social subordination. Since the beginning of time men who thought have always dreamed of freedom; and for two hundred years now independence has been a word to conjure with. But in so far as independence means freedom to follow one’s own unregulated desires, it is a fantastic and dangerous dream; and yet this dream of impossible independence has been among the greatest influences in furthering human development in the past.

The old-time dependence of one individual on the immediate caprices of another largely disappeared with the passing of slavery. But in place of this personal subjection has come a more complex and in some ways more compelling and crushing control through the monopoly of wealth. Property has become the medium through which the most binding of human relations are organized. Accumulated wealth has become a great reservoir of power to which some individuals gain access through rights of birth, others through carefully guarded privileges, and still others through cunning devices or through force; but the masses of the people must gain their fragments of this wealth through arduous lifelong labor. Even the earth, the original source of all wealth, is parceled out, and all of it is now owned by individuals or groups who control it in their own interests. One man may thus have thousands of acres which he cannot use, and which he will not allow others to use, while another has not where to lay his head. Laws jealously guard this wealth, which is the key to all opportunity; and public opinion, that most subtle, pervasive and compelling of all forms of law, gathers a thousand sacred initiations, rites, ceremonies, prohibitions and ex-communications around it. A man who has killed his neighbor, or ruined his friend’s family, may be less punished by society than one who cheats at cards.

In primitive life a man may be a man by virtue of what he is; to-day he may have all the rights and privileges of any man by virtue of what he possesses. In any community can be found strong men, honest, though misplaced or unfortunate, begging bread, wasting their lives for want of money to live decently. And beside these one sees other men of weak physique and feeble minds, who have lived as parasites on society all their lives, but who are handsomely dressed, well fed, and possessed of power to do as they will, simply because they have access to wealth. It is no wonder that if one would seek freedom to-day in America he must look for her image on a gold coin.

It is not difficult to see why property has become such a powerful instrument in civilization. Anything which a person really owns, in a psychological sense, is a home for his soul. Really owning an object, a toy, a garment, a watch or a home, means infusing one’s personality into it. A man who possesses significant things has a new body through which his soul can work; this body trains his powers; and it should give him life more abundantly. A landless man must become a soulless man. Of course, we are not here speaking of legal ownership. Many people own legally things into which they have never infused themselves; sometimes they have so many things that no individual could possibly infuse himself into them.

These conditions may prevail even in primitive life, but to-day they have been vastly increased through the fact that with advancing civilization money was devised. This is a system of counters, generally coin or paper, not really valuable in themselves, but always resting back for value on the earth, or on something derived from it. In the past it was supposed that there were some things which, because of their nature, were not marketable, while others were beyond price. To-day we set values on everything, even on men’s bodies; eyes, ears, legs and lives can be priced. There are, in fact, insurance companies and factories that have regular schedules of value for various parts of the body. Our courts set prices on blighted affections, damaged reputations, social advancements, impaired digestions, damaged complexions, nervous shocks and extreme humiliations. Even a woman’s honor may have a price in dollars.

These property rights, like the rights of the person, have always been subject to violence. Powerful individuals and groups have always been able to overstep legal restrictions and public opinion, and seize what they desired. The land grabbing going on in North Africa and Persia to-day and the activity of great industrial monopolies at home, show us that some property rights still need to be secured by force. In this struggle, it has come about naturally that men, being stronger, freer and less scrupulous than women, have outstripped them and have so far had a pretty complete monopoly of wealth. In fact women themselves have at times become property. In such times a man who stole or bought a woman, naturally took over with her all her rights in real estate and personal property as well as her person and her services.

Only gradually did women gain power to hold property themselves. Mainly because fathers wished to preserve property in their families, the right of women to inherit became slowly established as civilization advanced. In Judea, Greece and Rome, certain rights of a woman to hold property were clearly settled. In the reversion to force under feudalism, woman’s rights to outside property suffered; but they have been gradually restored during the last few centuries. To-day, in civilized lands, a woman’s rights to property, inherited or definitely given her or purchased by her, are everywhere recognized, if she does not marry. In France, and other Latin countries, she may still lose control of her property if she takes a husband; but in northern and western lands, even a married woman may retain her possessions.

Woman’s body, too, is increasingly looked upon as her personal property. With the raising of the age of consent; with increasing severity in laws punishing rape, and with the abrogation of judicial orders for the restitution of marital rights, it is now quite generally recognized that a woman should have the right to control her own person. Still, in many lands there is much to be done before this right is fully safeguarded.

The place where a woman has not yet achieved economic freedom is in the disposal of her labor. One must remember, however, in this connection, that not only is there no fixed standard of values in human service as yet, but that many indispensable forms of service have not even been legally recognized as valuable. In early forms of civilization, fighting and praying were considered the most important work the community received, and warriors and priests gained the big rewards. They received lands, gold, servants and dignities, while industrial workers, even the directors, were despised. To-day we have reversed all this and we may pay a general only five thousand dollars a year, and a priest eight hundred dollars, while a man who develops a big industry may receive a hundred thousand dollars annually. Again, a man who invents a new gun may be given a fortune, like that of Herr Krupp, while a man who invents a surgical instrument is prevented by the ethics of his profession from even patenting it. If Pasteur had been paid for his services to France and to humanity, he would have ranked in the financial world with Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Schwab. We pay a State superintendent of public instruction ten thousand dollars a year; but Miss Jane Addams, as instructor in ethics to the United States, receives no salary, and she must even beg the money to maintain her laboratory at Hull House. The whole question of payment for services is in a chaotic condition. Those who serve mankind most faithfully are rewarded on the principle, “From each according to his ability;” but nowhere is the remainder of the principle, “To each according to his needs,” recognized. Hence our greatest servants must still beg support from our cleverest exploiters.

Domestic service is indispensable to society, but so far it has remained in the field of semi-slavery and uncertain barter; in a word, it is still in the feudal stage. The woman gives what she is and has, and nominally she gets protection and support. Sometimes these fail and, on the other hand, she occasionally receives the unearned gifts supposed to befit a potentate or a shrine. As women become educated they find this condition of uncertainty and instability unbearable. They are willing to work, but they must have a chance to think and to plan their lives according to their individual needs. Some degree of economic independence is necessary to intelligent thinking and orderly living. It is not that women are demanding more property; they are demanding some definite individual property as a home for their souls; and they are coming to realize that if this property rests on some one else’s feelings and caprices it is no home for the soul; it is only a tavern.

This conception is well illustrated by the case of a woman in western New York, who married about 1850, and went to live on a farm with her husband. They had small means, but she brought seven hundred dollars to the altar, which was more than he possessed in ready capital. Her part was, however, soon swallowed up in the general business, and while there was a tacit agreement, voiced at long intervals, that she had put something into the business, her part never increased, though the man with whom she worked grew well-to-do. Certain feudal rights in the butter the woman made and in the chickens she raised, yielded her small sums, which often escaped her, but which she sometimes secured and put into a few silver spoons and dishes for her table, a square of Brussels carpet, three lace curtains, a marble topped stand, and six horsehair covered chairs for her parlor. These articles were considered in a very special sense her own. The man might have sold them and used the money, but public opinion would have condemned him had he done so.

Meantime the woman cooked for the family and the hired men, scrubbed and washed and mended. She strained and skimmed the milk from a dozen cows, and churned the butter; she fed the calves; cared for the hens; dug in the garden; gathered the vegetables; did the family sewing; and stole fragments of time for her flower-beds. Her hours were from five in the morning until nine at night, three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, with no half-days or Sundays off.

Incidentally she read her Bible, maintained religious exercises in the village, provided the church with a carpet by methods of indirection and kept the church clean. She upheld a moral standard toward which men only weakly struggled; hunted down and drove away all other women who refused equal service to their lords; ministered to the neighboring sick; and doled out alms in winter-time. Her home was a social and industrial microcosm which she conducted as a feudal holding under the protection of her lord. It would be an interesting study to work out the rules of this feudal relation between husband and wife in any agricultural community. They would be found as varied, as unjust and arbitrary, and as generous, as those of the old regime in France.

A woman in a home is supposed to furnish three kinds of service. She must be a housekeeper, a wife and a mother. As housekeeper, her services can be estimated in current values running from three to twenty-five dollars a week with board and lodging. The other two kinds of service have never been reduced to monetary values.

As a wife, a woman is supposed to give her love, her person, her sympathy and inspiration; the personal care of a husband, including his clothes, attention to his relations and friends and general management of his social position and reputation. If she fills this position well, she is mistress, valet, confidential adviser and public entertainer. Possibly these services can be rated except the first, and even here the divorce courts scale alienated affections all the way from five hundred to twenty-five thousand dollars, according to the appearance of the woman and the skill of contending lawyers.

As a mother, the woman is supposed to give children a good heritage, nurse them, care for them, doctor them and train them. We have established values for these services as wet-nurse, nurse-maid, governess, doctor and teacher, but who can estimate a woman’s value in giving a child a good heritage?

It is no wonder that such a difficult problem has remained thus far unsolved. Here and there a man gives his wife a household allowance, from the money they earn in common, and she struggles to save from it some fragments for her individual needs; others put their wives on a salary; and some others divide the income on a fractional basis. But the slightest study of existing conditions must convince any one that women are everywhere deeply dissatisfied with their economic relations to the family. On referring recently to this fact before an audience almost equally divided between suffragists and anti-suffragists, I found every woman present applauding the statement. Another time when I asked more than sixty of the wealthiest women in one of our cities how many were dissatisfied with their relations to the family property, explaining that I was not asking how many wanted more money but how many wanted a different relation to the family money, all the women raised their hands except three and they all had private property.

Meantime, economic changes, to be described in the next chapter, have transformed our homes and nearly eight million women have gone outside to earn money. The gladness with which they have gone shows that they were not afraid to work, though at first the money did not belong to them, but to their families. Almost everywhere in the United States the money women now earn is their own; only in Louisiana can the husband collect his wife’s wages. Any one who reads Mrs. Gilman’s masterly study of the evil effects accompanying woman’s economic independence must feel how far-reaching are not only the discontent but also the evil influences of our present system through over-emphasizing sex and through corrupting the public thinking and feeling concerning services and wages in general.

Yet no one can seriously approach this problem in his own person without feeling that the relations of husband and wife contain elements that not only make it impossible to resolve the woman’s service into money values, but that would make it useless to do so even if it could be done. The most distinctive quality of love is its desire to give. Love that seeks to get is not love. If when a woman gives herself she tries to secure individual property it will be only that she may give it to the man she loves. Marriage is a partnership of soul and body, and this includes property. It still remains true, however, that each must have in order that he may give. Besides this, there are always outside obligations, and special needs within the group, that require individual property for their realization.

In the past, the partnership of marriage has been incomplete on the property side; why not complete it? Why not reorganize our laws and our public opinion so that two people who establish a family, putting into it all they have, should pay out of the income the necessary family expenses and divide all else equally between the parties? Property acquired before marriage, and all inherited property, might well be held in individual right since it should never be a prize for prostitution, not even when it is euphemistically termed “a good home.”

Under equal suffrage Idaho has passed such a law, and all property gained after marriage belongs equally to husband and wife. If the wife dies, her heirs, in absence of a will, inherit half of the family property. If the two separate, the court, in absence of an outside agreement, settles the property as it does the children. The judge may order that it be divided equally, or he may give it all to either party, according to conditions; but the woman has identical rights with the man. Surely some such solution is demanded by our present unrest. No one will ever be economically independent; but husband and wife should be economically equal.