Facts And Fictions Of Life Part 7

Allow me to read the closing paragraph of a letter to me from Dr. E. C.

Spitzka, the celebrated New York brain specialist, to whom I am greatly indebted for much valuable information:

"You may hold me responsible for the following declaration: That any statement to the effect that an observer can tell by looking at a brain, or examining it microscopically, whether it belonged to a female or a male subject, is not founded on carefully-observed facts. The balance and the compa.s.ses show slight differences; the weight of the male brain being greater, and the angle formed by the sulcus of Rolando, forming a larger expansion of the frontal lobes; but both these points of differences have been determined by the method of averages. They do not necessarily apply to the individual brain and hence can not be utilized to determine the s.e.x of a single brain, except by those who are willing to take the chances of guessing. The a.s.sertion that the microscope reveals definite characteristic points of difference between the male and female brain is utterly incorrect. No such difference has ever been demonstrated, nor do I think it will be by more elaborate methods than those we now possess. Numerous female brains exceed numerous male brains in absolute weight, in complexity of convolutions, and in what brain anatomists would call the n.o.bler proportions. So that he who takes these as his criteria of the male brain may be grievously mistaken in attempting to a.s.sert the s.e.x of a brain dogmatically. If I had one hundred female brains and one hundred male brains together, I should select the one hundred containing the largest and best developed brains as probably containing fewer female brains than the remaining one hundred. More than this no cautious, experienced brain anatomist would venture to declare."

WOMAN AS AN ANNEX

Ladies and Gentlemen:--If it were not often tragic and always humiliating, it would be exceedingly amusing to observe the results of a method of thought and a civilization which has proceeded always upon the idea that man is the race and that woman is merely an annex to him and because of his desires, needs and dictum.

Strangely enough, the bigotry or s.e.x bias and pride does not carry this theory below the human animal. Among scientists and evolutionists, and, indeed, even among the various religious explanations of the source and cause of things, the male and female of all species of animals, birds and insects come into life and tread its paths together and as equals.

The male tiger does not a.s.sume to teach his mate what her "sphere" is, and the female hippopotamus is supposed to have sufficient brain power of her own to enable her to live her own life and plan her own occupations, decide upon her own needs and generally regulate her own existence, without being compelled to call upon the gentleman of her family in particular, and all of the gentlemen of her species in general, to decide for her when she is doing the proper thing. The laws of their species are not made and executed by one s.e.x for the other, and the same food, sun, covering, educational and general conduct and opportunities of life which open to the one s.e.x are equally open and free for the other. No protective tariff is put upon masculine prerogative to enable him to control all the necessaries of life for both s.e.xes, to a.s.sure to him all the best opportunities, occupations, education and results of achievement which is the common need of their kind. In short, the female is in no way his subordinate.

In captivity it is the female which has been, as a rule, most prized, best cared for and preserved. In the barnyard, field and stable alike, it is deemed wise to sell or kill most of the males. They are looked upon as good food, so to speak, but not as useful citizens. What they add to the world is not thought so much of--their capacities for the future are less valued than are those of the other s.e.x. Even the man-made, religious legends bring all of these animals into life in pairs. Neither has precedence of the other. Neither is subject to the other.

But when it comes to the human animal--the final blossom of creative thought, as religionists word it, or of universal energy, as scientists put it--the male, for the first time, becomes the whole idea.

A helpmate for him is an after-thought, and according to man's teaching up to the present time, an after-thought only half matured and very badly executed. In spite of all the practice on other pairs--one of each s.e.x--it remained for the Almighty, or nature, to make the mistake (for the first time) of creating the human race with one of its halves a mere "annex" to the other. A subject. A subordinate. Without brains to do its own thinking, without judgment to be its own guide. This blunder is not made with any other pair. In the case of all other animals each s.e.x has its own brain power with which it directs its own affairs, makes its own laws of conduct, and so preserves its own individuality, its personal liberty, its freedom of action and of development.

I am not ignorant of, nor do I forget, the scientific fact that in nature among ants, birds and beasts there are tribes and communities where some are slaves or are subject to others; but what I do a.s.sert is this, that this is not a s.e.x distinction or degradation. It is not infrequently the males who are the subjects in these communities where liberty is not equal and where, therefore, the very basic princ.i.p.al of equality is impossible or unknown. And did it ever occur to you that a community or a people which recognizes in its fundamental laws and customs--in its very forms of expression--that it is right to preserve inequality of opportunity, of education, of emolument and of conduct has yet to learn the meaning of the words "liberty" and "justice?"

Nowhere in all nature is the mere fact of s.e.x--and that the race-producing s.e.x--made a reason for fixed inequality of liberty, of subjugation, of subordination and of determined inferiority of opportunity in education, in acquirement, in position--in a word, in freedom. Nowhere until we reach man!

Here, where for the first time in nature there enter artificial social conditions and needs, these artificial demands coupled with the great fact of maternity (everywhere else in nature absolutely under its own control), maternity under s.e.x subjection, linked with financial dependence upon the one not so burdened, has fixed this subordinate status upon that part of the race which is the producer of the race.

This fact alone is enough to account for the slow, the distorted, the diseased and the criminal progress of humanity.

Subordinates cannot give lofty character. Servile temperaments cannot blossom into liberty-loving, liberty-giving descendants. Many of the lower animals destroy their young if they are born in captivity. They demand that maternity shall be free. Free from man's conditions or captivity, as it always has been free from the tyranny of s.e.x control in their own species. *

* While reading the proof for this book this corroborative and interesting ill.u.s.tration appeared in the New York World of date June 24:

The tragedy which has been expected to occur any time at the Zoo was enacted yesterday, when Alice, the lioness who gave birth to three whelps on Wednesday morning, ate one and killed another. The third was only rescued by strategy.

Animals never kill their young in their wild state, except the male lion, from whom the female hides the young. In captivity it's a common thing.

Keeper Downey first discovered the deed, and when the Director arrived Alice was just finishing one of her offspring. Another lay dead in the corner and the third had crawled away and was crying pitifully. Director Smith had the door raised which leads into another cage and Alice was coaxed inside. Then the door was let down and Keepers Downy and Snyder caught the only survivor and secured the body of the other. It was a dangerous proceeding, as Alice was terribly angry and beat her great body against the thick iron bars.

The dead cub was sent to the Museum of Natural History, and after a good deal of skirmishing around by Keepers Downey and Shannon a Newfoundland dog belonging to an employee of Clausen's Brewery, on East Fifty-fifth street, who yesterday morning gave birth to eight pups, was found, and last evening the survivor of the triplets was taken to the brewery.

The Director will pay the owner of the dog $3 per week for the baby's board and lodging, and, to the credit of the generous-hearted mother dog, she has taken the little lioness to her breast without so much as a questioning look.

She licked it and snuggled it as she did her own and caressed it into nursing. After it is a few weeks old and is strong it can be taken away from the dog and, with little trouble, can be brought up on a bottle.

It is the fashion in this country now-a-days to say that women are treated as equals. Some of the most progressive and best of men truly believe what they say in this regard. One of our leading daily papers, which insists that this is true, and even goes so far as to say that American gentlemen believe in and act upon the theory that their mothers and daughters are of a superior quality--and are always of the very first consideration to and by men--recently had an editorial headlined "Universal Suffrage the Birthright of the Free Born." I read it through, and if you will believe me, the writer had so large a b.u.mp of s.e.x arrogance that he never once thought of one-half of humanity in the entire course of an elaborate and eloquent two-column article!

"Universal" suffrage did not touch but one s.e.x. There was but one s.e.x "free born." There was but one which was born with "rights." The words "persons," "citizens," "residents of the state" and all similar terms were used quite freely, but not once did it dawn upon the mind of the writer that every one of those words, every argument for freedom, every plea for liberty and justice, equality and right, applied to the human race and not merely to one-half of that race.

s.e.x bias, s.e.x arrogance, s.e.x pride, s.e.x a.s.sumption is so ingrained that it simply does not occur to the male logicians, scientists, philosophers and politicians that there is a humanity. They see, think of and argue for and about only a s.e.x of man--with an annex to him--woman. They call this the race; but they do not mean the race--they mean men. They write and talk of "human beings;" of their needs, their education, their capacity and development; but they are not thinking of humanity at all.

They are thinking of, planning for and executing plans which subordinate the race--the human ent.i.ty--to a subdivision, the mark and sign of which is the lowest and most universal possession of male nature--the mere procreative instinct and possibility. And this has grown to be the habit of thought until in science, in philosophy, in religion, in law, in politics--one and all--we must translate all language into other terms than those used. For the word "universal" we must read "male;" for the "people," the "nation," we must read "men." The "will of the majority--majority rule"--really means the larger number of masculine citizens. And so with all our common language, it is in a false tense. It is mere democratic verbal gymnastics, clothing the same old monarchial, aristocratic mental beliefs, with man now the "divine right"

ruler and with woman his subject and perquisite. Its gender is misstated and its import multiplied by two. It does not mean what it says, and it does not say what it means.

Our thoughts are adjusted to false verbal forms, and so the thoughts do not ring true. They are merely hereditary forms of speech. All masculine thought and expression up to the present time has been in the language of s.e.x, and not in the language of race; and so it has come about that the music of humanity has been set in one key and played on one chord.

It has been well said that an Englishman cannot speak French correctly until he has learned to think in French. It is far more true that no one can speak or write the language of human liberty and equality until he has learned to think in that language, and to feel without stopping to argue with himself, that right is not masculine only and that justice knows no s.e.x. Were the claim to superior opportunity, status and position based upon capacity, character or wealth, upon perfection of form or grace of bearing, one could understand, if not accept, the reasonableness of the position, for it would then rest upon some sort of recognized superiority, but while it is based upon s.e.x--a mere accident of form carrying with it a brute instinct, which is not even glorified by the capacity to produce, and seldom throughout nature, to suffer for and protect the blossom of that instinct--surely no lower, less vital or more degraded a basis could possibly be chosen.

Not long ago a heated argument arose here in Chicago over the teaching of German in the public schools. This argument was used by one of the leading contestants in one of the leading journals:

The whole amount of education that 95 per cent, of our public school pupils receive is lamentably small. It is far less than we could wish it to be.

Most of these children, who are to be the citizens, and by their ballots the rulers of this nation, can often remain but a few years in the schoolroom. For the average American citizen who is not a professional man, or who is not destined for diplomatic service abroad, English can afford all the mental and intellectual pabulum needed.

Now here is an amusing and also a humiliating ill.u.s.tration of the way these matters are handled, and it is for that reason, only, that I have used a local question here. "Ninety-five per cent, of our public school pupils," etc., "by their ballots are to be rulers of the nation,"

etc., "future citizens," forsooth! Now it simply did not occur to the gentleman who wrote this, and to the hundreds who so write and speak daily, that the most of those 95 per cent have no ballots, do not "rule," are not "future citizens," but that they belong to the proscribed s.e.x, have committed the crime of being girls, even before they entered the public schools, and so have permanently outlawed themselves for citizenship in this glorious republic of "equals." But his entire argument (made upon so large a per cent) really rests upon a much smaller number. But the girls made good ballast for the argument.

They answered to fill in the "awful example," but they are not allowed the justice of real citizenship, nor to be the future "rulers" for and because of whom the whole argument is made, for whose educational rights and needs, alone, because of their future ballots, he cares so tenderly.

It will not do to attempt to avoid this issue by the hackneyed plea.

"The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." Every one knows that this is not true in the sense in which it is used. It is true, alas! in a sense never dreamed of by politician and publican.

It is true that the degraded status of maternity has ruled and does rule the world, in that it has been, and is, the most potent power to keep the race from lofty achievement. Subject mothers never did, and subject mothers never will, produce a race of free, well poised, liberty-loving, justice-practicing children. Maternity is an awful power. It blindly strikes back at injustice with a force that is a fearful menace to mankind. And the race which is born of mothers who are hara.s.sed, bullied, subordinated and made the victims of blind pa.s.sion or power, or of mothers who are simply too petty and self-debased to feel their subject status, cannot fail to continue to give the horrible spectacles we have always had of war, of crime, of vice, of trickery, of double-dealing, of pretense, of lying, of arrogance, of subserviency, of incompetence, of brutality, and, alas! of insanity, idiocy and disease added to a fearful and unnecessary mortality.

To a student of anthropology and heredity it requires no great brain power to trace these results to causes. We need only remember that the mental, as well as the physical conditions, capacities and potentialities are inherited, to understand how the dead level of hopeless mediocrity must be preserved as the rule of the race so long as the potentialities of that race must be filtered always through and take its impetus from a mere annex to man's power, ambition, desires and opinions.

Let me respond right here to those who will--who always do--insist that woman is not so held to-day at least in England and America. That her present status is a dignified, an equal or even a superior one. I will ill.u.s.trate: In a recent speech by the Hon. William E. Gladstone he pleaded most eloquently and earnestly for the right of Irishmen to rule and govern themselves. Among many other things he said: "The princ.i.p.al weapons of the opposition are bold a.s.sertion, persistent exaggeration, constant misconstruction and copious, arbitrary and baseless prophecies.

True there are conflicting financial arrangements to be dealt with, but among the difficulties nothing exists which ought to abash or terrify men desirous to accomplish a great object. For the first time in ninety years the bill will secure the supremacy of parliament as founded upon right as well as backed by power."

Had these remarks been made with an eye single to the "woman question,"

they could not have been more exactly descriptive of the facts in the case; but with Irishmen only on his mind he continued thus: "The persistent distrust of the Irish people, despite all they can do, comes simply to this, that they are to be pressed below the level of civilized mankind. When the boon of self government is given to the British colonies is Ireland alone to be excepted from its blessings? To deny Ireland home rule is to say that she lacks the ordinary faculties of humanity."

He said "Irish people," but he meant Irish men only. But see to what his argument leads. He says it is "pressing them below the level of civilized mankind" to deny them the right to stand erect, to use their own brains and wills in their own government; and a great party in his own country and a great party in this country echo with mad enthusiasm his opinions--for men! They call it "mankind." They mean one-half of mankind only, for not even Mr. Gladstone is able to rise high enough above his s.e.x bias to see that the denial of all self-government, all representation in the making of the laws she is to obey "presses woman below the level of civilized mankind." Words cease to have a par value even with the stickler for verbal accuracy the instant their own arguments are applied to the other s.e.x. Eloquently men can and do portray the wrongs, the outrages, the abuses which always have arisen, which always must arise from cla.s.s legislation--from that condition which makes it impossible for one cla.s.s or condition of citizens of a country to make their needs, desires, preferences and opinions felt in the organic law of their country on an equal and level footing with their fellows. Men have needed no great ability to enable them to prove that tyranny unspeakable always did and always will follow unlimited power over others so long as their arguments applied between man and man, but the instant the identical arguments are used to apply between man and woman that instant their whole att.i.tude changes.

That instant words lose all par value. That instant all men, including those who have but just waxed eloquent over the injustice and the real danger of permitting inequality before the law, become aristocrats.

Claiming to be the logical s.e.x, man throws logic to the winds. Claiming to have fought and bled to enthrone "liberty," he forgets its very name!

a.s.serting that in his own hand alone can the scales of justice be held level, he makes of justice, of liberty and of equality a mockery and a pretense! He has so far read all of those words in the masculine gender only. He has not yet learned to think them in a universal language. He stultifies his every utterance and makes of his mind a jailer, and of his laws slave drivers, for all who cannot by physical force wrench from him the right to their own liberty and to their human status of equality of opportunity.

Men have everywhere grown to believe that they have been born and that they rule women by divine right. Woman is a mere annex to and for his glory. She exists for him to rule, to think for, to adore, to tolerate or to abuse as he sees fit, or as is his type or nature. Her appeal must not be to an equal standard of justice which she has helped to frame, administer and live by; but it must be to his generosity, his tenderness, his toleration or his chivalry--in short, to his absolute power over her. "No people can be free without an equal legal footing for all of its citizens!" exclaims the statesman, and drums beat and trumpets blare and men march and countermarch in enthusiastic response to the sentiment. "We must have a government of the people, by the people, for the people" is cheered to the echo whenever heard, and n.o.body realizes that what is meant always is a government of men, by men, for men, with woman as an annex.

Only three weeks ago all of our papers had leaders, editorials and cablegrams to announce that "universal suffrage has been granted in Belgium." They all grew enthusiastic over it. One of our leading New York editors said (and I use his editorial simply because it is a very good example of what almost all of our important journals said):

"The triumph of the Belgian democracy is an event of the first significance. The ma.s.ses had long appealed in vain for a removal of the property qualification which restricted the right of suffrage to 140,000 persons out of a population of over 6,-000,000 but the chambers, dominated by the wealthy cla.s.ses, resolutely refused to comply with the demand until a dangerous revolution was inaugurated.

"Even how the change in the const.i.tution granting universal suffrage is coupled with the right of plural voting by the property-owners, but it is quite certain that this obnoxious feature will be soon abandoned by the chambers and universal suffrage will prevail, as in the adjoining nations of France and Germany.

"When these newly enfranchised electors choose the next legislature important changes may be expected in the laws applicable to the employment of labor, which have hitherto been framed solely in the interest of the mine-owners and the manufacturers. Fortunately for the king, he seems to be in sympathy with this effort of the ma.s.ses to acquire a fair representation in the government. In the recent riots the hostility of the people was directed against the a.s.sembly rather than against the crown. It is very evident that the democratic spirit is gaining ground throughout Europe. Its influence is manifest in the home rule movement in England, in the hostility to the army bill in Germany, and in the rapid changes of the ministers of France. It steadily advances in every direction and never loses ground once acquired. It progresses peacefully if it can, but forcibly if it must. Its triumph in Belgium is one of the signs of the times in the old world."

"The people" are all male in Belgium, in France, Germany and America, or else all of these statements are mere figures of speech, are wholly untrue, for the women of Belgium, of France, of Germany--and, alas! of democratic America, were not even thought of when the words "people,"

"citizens," "ma.s.ses," "laborers," etc., were used. They are counted in the estimates of the population as all of these. They are used to fill vacancies, to swell estimates, to round out statistics, but in the result of these arguments and statistics, in the victories won for liberty to the individual, woman has no part. She is the one outlaw in human progress. In a recent magazine this pa.s.sage occurs:

"Austria.--On April 2 Dr. Victor Adler, a socialist leader, spoke to about 4,000 workingmen in favor of universal suffrage. He said that two-thirds of the adult men had not the suffrage. Only half-civilized countries, like Russia and Spain, now placed their citizens in such inequality before the law. The workingmen of Austria had never before this winter suffered such hardships, and now in Vienna 26,000 workmen were without shelter."