Mobilizing Woman-Power Part 7

To any one who realizes the significance of the military situation as it stands, and who is cognizant of the contrast between Germany's use of her entire people in her national effort, and the slow mobilization of woman-power among the Allies and entire lack of anything worthy the name of mobilization of the labor-power of women in the United States, there will come a determination to bury every jealousy between woman and woman, all prejudice in men, to cut red tape in government, with the one object of combining all resources.

The full power of our men must be thrown into military effort. And, then, if as a nation we have brains to pool, we will not stand niggling, but will throw women doctors in to render their service, grant to the nurse corps what it needs to ensure efficiency, throw open the technical schools to girls as well as to boys, modify the college course to meet the facts of life. Each woman unprepared is a national handicap, each prejudice blocking the use of woman-power is treachery to our cause.

As to the final outcome of united thought and group action among women, no one can doubt. Contacts will rub off angles, capable service will break down s.e.x prejudice and overcome government opposition. But there is not time to wait for the slow development of "final outcomes."

Women must pool their brains against their own shortcomings, and in favor of their own ability to back up their country now and here.

IX

"BUSINESS AS USUAL"

It is a plat.i.tude to say that America is the most extravagant nation on earth. The whole world tells us so, and we do not deny it, being, indeed, a bit proud of the fact. Who is there among us who does not respond with sympathetic understanding to the defense of the bride reprimanded for extravagance by her mother-in-law (women have mothers-in-law), "John and I find we can do without the necessities of life. It's the luxuries we must have." One of the obstacles to complete mobilization of our country is extravagance. And at the center of this national failing sits the American woman enthroned.

Europe found it could not allow old-time luxury trades to go on, if the war was to be won. "Business as usual" is not in harmony with victory.

I remember the first time I heard the slogan, and how it carried me and everyone else away. The Zeppelins had visited London the night before.

A house in Red Lion Mews was crushed down into its cellar, a heap of ruins. Every pane of gla.s.s was shattered in the hospitals surrounding Queen's Square, and ploughed deep, making a great basin in the center of the gra.s.s, lay the remnants of the bomb that had buried itself in the heart of England. The shops along Theobald's Road were wrecked, but in the heaps of broken gla.s.s in each show window were improvised signs such as, "Don't sympathize with us, buy something." The sign which was displayed oftenest read, "Business as usual."

The first I noticed was in the window of a print shop, the owner a woman. I talked to her through the frame of the shattered gla.s.s. She looked very pale and her face was cut, but she and everyone else was calm. And no one was doing business as usual more composedly than a wee tot trudging along to school with a nasty scratch from a gla.s.s splinter on her chubby cheek.

"Business as usual" expressed the fine spirit, the courage, the determination of a people. As the sporting motto of an indomitable race, it was very splendid. But war is not a sport, it is a cold, hard science, demanding every energy of the nation for its successful pursuit. In proportion as our indulgence in luxury has been greater than that of any European nation, our challenge to every business must be the more insistent. There must be a straight answer to two questions: Does this enterprise render direct war service, or, if not, is it essential to the well-being of our citizens?

But the discipline will not come from the G.o.ds. Nor will our government readily turn taskmaster. The effort must come largely as self-discipline, growing into group determination to win the war and the conviction that it is impossible to achieve victory and conserve the virility of our people, if any considerable part of the community devotes its time, energy and money to creating useless things. A nation can make good in this cataclysm only if it centers its whole power on the two objects in view: military victory, and husbanding of life and resources at home.

Let me hasten to add that the act of creating a thing does not include only the processes of industry. The act of buying is creative. The riot of luxury trades in the United States will not end so long as the American woman remains a steady buyer of luxuries. The mobilization of women as workers is no more essential to the triumph of our cause, than the mobilization of women for thrift. The beginning and end of saving in America rests almost entirely in the hands of women. They are the buyers in the working cla.s.s and in the professional cla.s.s. Among the wealthy they set the standard of living.

Practically every appeal for thrift has been addressed to the rich. I am not referring to the supply of channels into which to pour savings, but to appeals to make the economies which will furnish the means to buy stamps or bonds. Those appeals are addressed almost wholly to the well-to-do, as for example, suggestions as to reducing courses at dinner or cutting out "that fourth meal."

Self-denial, no doubt, is supposed to be good for the millionaire soul, but to such it is chiefly recommended, I think, as an example sure of imitation. What the rich do, other women will follow, is the idea. But the steady insistence that we fight in this war for democracy has put into the minds of the people very definite demands for independence and for freedom.

In such a democratic world the newly adopted habits of the wealthy will not prove widely convincing. Economy needs other than an aristocratic stimulus.

[Ill.u.s.tration: How can business be "as usual" when in Paris there are about 1800 of these small workshops where a woman dips Bengal Fire and grenades into a bath of paraffin!]

I do not mean to under-estimate the value of economy in the well-to-do cla.s.s. There is no doubt that shop windows on Fifth Avenue are a severe commentary upon our present intelligence and earnestness of purpose. No one, I think, would deny that it would be a service if the woman of fashion ceased to drape fur here, there and everywhere on her gowns except where she might really need the thick pelt to keep her warm, and instead saved the price of the garment which serves no purpose but that of display, and gave the money in Liberty Bonds to buy a fur-lined coat for some soldier, or food for a starving baby abroad. And overburdened as the railways are with freight and ordinary pa.s.senger traffic, I am sure the general public will not fail to appreciate to the full a self-denial which leads patrons of private cars, Pullman and dining coaches to abandon their self-indulgence.

Undoubtedly economy among the rich is of value. I presume few would gainsay that it would have been well for America if the use of private automobiles had long since ceased, and the labor and plants used in their making turned to manufacturing much-needed trucks and ambulances.

But while not inclined to belittle the work of any possible saving and self-sacrifice on the part of those of wealth, it seems to me that the most fruitful field for war economy lies among simple people. Thrift waits for democratization.

We of limited means hug some of the most extravagant of habits. The average working-cla.s.s family enjoys none of the fruits of cooperation We keep each to our isolated family group, while the richer a person is the more does she gather under her roof representatives of other families.

Her cook may come from the Berri family, the waitress may be an Andersen, the nurse an O'Hara.

The poor might well practice the economy of fellowship.

The better-off live in apartment houses where the economy of central heating is practised, while the majority of the poor occupy tenements where the extravagance of the individual stove is indulged in. The saving of coal is urged, but the authorities do not seek to secure for the poor the comfort of the true method of fuel saving.

The richer a family is, the more it saves by the use of skilled service.

The poor, clinging to their prejudices and refusing to trust one another, do not profit by cooperative buying, or by central kitchens run by experts. Money is wasted by amateurish selection of food and clothing, and nutritive values are squandered by poor cooking.

Unfortunately Uncle Sam does not suggest how many War Saving Stamps could be bought as a result of economy along these lines.

The woman with the pay envelope may democratize thrift. She knows how hard it is to earn money, and has learned to make her wages reach a long way. Then, too, she has it brought home to her each pay day that health is capital. She finds that it is economy to keep well, for lost time brings a light pay envelope. Every woman who keeps herself in condition is making a war saving. There has been no propaganda as yet appealing to women to value dress according to durability and comfort rather than according to its prettiness, to bow to no fashion which means the lessening of power. To corset herself as fashion dictates, to prop herself on high heels, means to a woman just so much lost efficiency, and even the most thoughtless, if appealed to for national saving, might learn to turn by preference in dress, in habits, in recreation, to the simple things.

The j.a.panese, I am told, make a ceremony of going out from the city to enjoy the beauties of a moonlight night. We go to a stuffy theatre and applaud a night "set." Nature gives her children the one, and the producer charges his patrons for the other. A propaganda of democratic war economy would teach us to delight in the beauties of nature.

In making the change from business as usual to economy, Europe suffered hardship, because although the retrenchments suggested were fairly democratic it had not created channels into which savings might be thrown with certainty of their flowing on to safe expenditures. Europe was not ready with its great thrift schemes, nor had the adjustments been made which would enable a shop to turn out a needed uniform, let us say, in place of a useless dress.

Definite use of savings has been provided for in the United States. The government needs goods of every kind to make our military effort successful. Camps must be built for training the soldiers, uniforms, guns and ammunition supplied. Transportation on land and sea is called for. The government needs money to carry on the industries essential to winning the war.

If a plucky girl who works in a b.u.t.ton factory refuses to buy an ornament which she at first thought of getting to decorate her belt, and puts that twenty-five cents into a War Saving Stamp, all in the spirit of backing up her man at the front, she will not find herself thrown out of employment; instead, while demands for unnecessary ornamental fastenings will gradually cease, she will be kept busy on government orders.

Profiting by the errors of those nations who had to blaze out new paths, the United States knit into law, a few months after the declaration of war, not only the quick drafting of its man-power for military service, but methods of absorbing the people's savings. If we neither waste nor h.o.a.rd, we will not suffer as did Europe from wide-spread unemployment.

There is more work to be done than our available labor-power can meet.

There is nothing to fear from the curtailment of luxury; our danger lies in lack of a sound definition of extravagance. Uncle Sam could get more by appeals to simple folk than by homilies preached to the rich. The Great War is a conflict between the ideals of the peoples. 'Tis a people's war, and with women as half the people. The savings made to support the war must needs, then, be made by the people, for the people.

There has been no compelling propaganda to that end. The suggestion of mere "cutting down" may be a valuable goal to set for the well-to-do, but it is not a mark to be hit by those already down to bed rock. The only saving possible to those living on narrow margins is by cooperation, civil or state.

It is a mad extravagance, for instance, to kill with autos children at play in the streets. A saving of life could easily be achieved through group action, by securing children's attendants, by opening play-grounds on the roofs of churches and public buildings, by shutting off streets dedicated to the sacred right of children to play. This would be a war saving touching the heart and the enthusiasm of the people.

Central munic.i.p.al heating is not a wild dream, but a recognized economy in many places. Munic.i.p.al kitchens are not vague surmisings, but facts achieved in the towns of Europe. They are forms of war thrift. In America no such converting examples of economy are as yet given, and not an appeal has been made to women to save through solidarity.

Uncle Sam has been commendably quick and wise in offering a reservoir to hold the tiny savings, but slow in starting a democratic propaganda suggesting ways of saving the pennies.

If business as usual is a poor motto, so is life as usual, habits as usual.

X

"AS MOTHER USED TO DO"

Man's admiration for things as mother used to do them is as great an obstacle as business as usual in the path of winning the war and husbanding the race. The glamour surrounding the economic feats of mother in the past hides the shortcomings of today.

I once saw one of her old fortresses, a manor home where in bygone days she had reigned supreme. In the court yard was the smoke house where she cured meat and fish. In the cellar were the caldrons and vats where long ago she tried tallow and brewed beer. And there were all the utensils for dealing with flax. In the garret I saw the spindles for spinning cotton and wool, and the hand looms for weaving the homespun. In her day, mother was a great creator of wealth.

But then an economic earthquake came. Foundations were shaken, the roof was torn off her domestic workshop. Steam and machinery, like cyclones, carried away her industries, and nothing was left to her but odds and ends of occupations.

Toiling in the family circle from the days of the cave dwellers, mother had become so intimately a.s.sociated in the tribal mind with the hearthstone that the home was called her sphere. Around this segregation acc.u.mulated accretions of opinion, layer on layer emanating from the mind of her mate. Let us call the accretions the Adamistic Theory. Its authors happened to be the government and could use the public treasury in furtherance of publicity for their ideas set forth in hieroglyphics cut in stone, or written in plain English and printed on the front page of an American daily.

One of the few occupations left to mother after the disruption of her sphere at the end of the eighteenth century was the preparation of food.

In the minds of men, food, from its seed sowing up to its mastication, has always been a.s.sociated with woman. Mention food and the average man thinks of mother. That is the Adam in him. And so, quite naturally, one must first consider this relation of women to food in the Adamistic Theory.