Mother Earth No. 2, April 1906 Part 3

CIVILIZATION IN AFRICA.

A large, strong man, dressed in a uniform and armed to the teeth, knocked at the door of a hut on the west coast of Africa.

"Who are you and what do you want?" said a voice from the inside.

"In the name of civilization, open your door or I'll break it down for you and fill you full of lead."

"But what do you want here?"

"My name is Christian Civilization. Don't talk like a fool, you black brute; what do you suppose I want here but to civilize you and make a reasonable human being out of you if it is possible."

"What are you going to do?"

"In the first place you must dress yourself like a white man. It is a shame and disgrace the way you go about. From now on you must wear underclothing, a pair of pants, vest, coat, plug hat, and a pair of yellow gloves. I will furnish them to you at reasonable rates."

"What shall I do with them?"

"Wear them, of course. You did not expect to eat them, did you? The first step to civilization is in wearing proper clothes."

"But it is too hot here to wear such garments. I'm not used to them.

I'll perish from the heat. Do you want to murder me?"

"Not particularly. But if you do die you will have the satisfaction of being a martyr to civilization."

"How kind!"

"Don't mention it. What do you do for a living?"

"When I am hungry I eat a banana; I eat, drink or sleep just as I feel like it."

"What horrible barbarity! You must settle down to some occupation, my friend. If you don't it will be my duty to lock you up as a vagrant."

"If I have to follow some occupation I think I'll start a coffee house.

I've got a considerable amount of coffee and sugar stored here and there."

"Oh, you have, have you? Why, you are not such a hopeless case as I thought you were. In the first place you want to pay me the sum of fifty dollars."

"What for?"

"As an occupation tax, you ignorant heathen. Do you expect all the blessings of civilization for nothing?"

"But I have no money."

"That makes no difference. I'll take it out in tea and coffee. If you don't pay up like a Christian man, I'll put you in jail for the rest of your life."

"What is jail?"

"Jail is a progressive word. You must be prepared to make some sacrifices for civilization, you know."

"What a great and glorious thing is civilization."

"You cannot possibly realize the benefits of it, but you will before I get through with you, my fine fellow."

The unfortunate native took to the woods and has not been seen since--_Waverly Magazine_.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

OUR PURPOSE.

By MARY HANSEN.

_I come, not with the blaring of trumpet, To herald the birth of a king; I come, not with traditional story, The life of a savior to sing; I come, not with jests for the silly, I come, not to worship the strong, But to question the powers that govern, To point out a world-old wrong._

_To kiss from the starved lips of childhood The lies that are sapping its breath, And brighten the brief cheerless valley That leads to the darkness of death; With reason and sympathy blended, And a hope that all mankind shall see, Untrammeled by Creed, Law or Custom-- The attainable goal of the Free._

MARRIAGE AND THE HOME.

By JOHN R. CORYELL.

You remember _Punch's_ advice to the young man about to be married--don't. There is a jest nearly half a century old, and yet ever fresh and poignant. Why? Can it be that the secret, serious voice of mankind proclaims the jest truth in masquerade? Can it be that marriage, as an inst.i.tution, has indeed proved itself in experience such a terrible failure?

We worship many fetishes, we of the superior civilization, and the inst.i.tution of marriage is the chief of them. Few of us but bow before that; before that and the home of which it is the foundation. And I know what scorn and obloquy and denunciation await that man who stands unawed before it, seeing in it but an ugly little idol. And I guess what will be dealt out to him who not only refuses to bow the head, but openly scoffs. And yet I am going to scoff and say ugly words about this fetish of ours. I am going to say that it represents ignorance, hides and causes hypocrisy, stands in the way of progress, drags low the standard of individual excellence, perpetuates many foul practices.

Let me admit at the outset that I recognize in the inst.i.tution of marriage a perfectly legitimate result of the working of the law of evolution. Of course it is; and the same may be said of everything that exists whether good or evil. Every vile and filthy thing, crime, disease, misery, are all equally legitimate products of the working of this law. Evolution is simply the process of the logical working of things; it explains how things come to be; and there is nothing in the nature of the law to enable it to give to its results the hall mark of sterling. A thing is because of something else that was. Marriage is because of a primeval club. Man craved woman and he procured her.

Considering the beginnings of the inst.i.tution of marriage, it is interesting, if nothing more, to consider the efforts of the priest to give it an attribute of sanct.i.ty, to call it a sacrament. In truth, marriage is the most artificial of the relations which exist in the social body. It is a device of man at his worst--a mixture of slavery, savage egotism and priestcraft. It is indicated by nothing in the physical const.i.tution of either male or female. It is an anomaly; a contract which can be freely entered into by the most unfit, but which cannot be broken, though both parties wish it, though absolute unfitness be patent, though h.e.l.l on earth be its result. The pretense must be abandoned that men and women marry in order to reproduce their kind.

Nothing could be less true. Marriage legalizes reproduction, but is not caused by desire for it. Marriage is the hard and fast tying together of a man and a woman without the least regard to moral or physiological conditions. Marriage may be for pecuniary gain, or for social advancement; it may be at the will of a controlling parent, or, more commonly for St. Paul's reason, that it is better to marry than to burn; but never for the reason that the parties to it are fitted to each other for parenthood. That supreme consideration not only does not enter into either the preliminary or after-thought of the matter, but is even held to be an indecent topic of conversation between persons not already married to each other.

The const.i.tuents of the average marriage are a man over-stimulated s.e.xually by mystery and ignorance, and a woman abnormally unders.e.xed by the course of self-repression and self-mutilation which have been taught her from her earliest childhood as necessities of modesty, purity and virtue. And then out of the carefully cultivated repugnance of the woman and the savage, exulting, unrelenting pa.s.sion of the man are produced children, frequently welcome, seldom premeditated. And we are asked to believe that out of such elements are created the best foundation for a race or nation. Surely, surely, that combination of conditions is the best for a race or a nation which produces the best individuals; and quite as surely we should strive to bring about those conditions which tend to produce the best individuals.

Then there is home. Home, sweet home! the perfect flower, we are told, that blooms on the fair stem of marriage. Yet it is the very citadel of ignorance, when it should be the school in which are taught the beautiful phenomena of physical life. Home! where the simplest, purest facts of life are converted into a nasty mystery and deliberately endowed with the characteristics of impurity and sin; for what else is the meaning of that solemn formula, which most of us have been taught, that we were conceived in sin? What else is the meaning of the hush and blush that go to any reference to s.e.x, sign or manifestation of s.e.x? Is it not awful beyond the power of words to express that a man and a woman come together in ignorance and beget children who are not even to obtain the benefit of such knowledge as their unfortunate parents pick up by the way, but must themselves begin the most responsible functions of life, not only in equal ignorance, but with an added load of misconceptions, s.e.x-superst.i.tions, immoral dogmas and probably physical disabilities? A short time since a father was speaking to me of his son, fourteen years of age, and plainly at an age when some of the beautiful phenomena of s.e.x-life were beginning to crowd upon him for notice. I asked the man if he had talked with his son about the matter. His answer was peculiar only in that he put into words a description of the att.i.tude of the average parent: "Talked to him about that? Not I. Let him learn as I did. No one ever told me." But some one had told him, as his unpleasantly reminiscent smile advised me! He had been told by ignorant companions, by ignorant servants, and, quite likely, by books, whose grossness would have been harmless but for the child's piteous ignorance. No, the man would not talk with his son about such things, but he would go into his club and talk into the small hours over a gla.s.s of whiskey with his friends there, turning the beauty and purity of s.e.x manifestation into shabby jest and impure ridicule. He would exchange stories based on s.e.x relation with any stranger with whom he might ride for two hours in a smoking car. Every man knows that I speak well within bounds.

And the girl child! what of her? Does her mother, the victim of misinformation and no information, of misuse and self-mutilation, in the sweet privacy of this home, which is called the cradle of peace and the nestling place of purity, save her by taking warning of her own ruined life and giving her the benefit of such little knowledge as she has gained in physical, mental and moral misery? We know she does not. On the contrary, the same terrible old lies are told, the same hideous practices are resorted to; and another poor creature is launched into that awful life of legalized prost.i.tution which is called marriage.

Motherhood is woman's highest function, and, moreover, it is a function which it is unwise not to exercise; for it is infinitely more perilous for a healthy woman not to be a mother than it is for her to bear children. Motherhood, too, is the most markedly indicated function of a woman's body. She is specialized for it; it is the thing indicated. And yet we never say to a woman, Be a mother when you will; we hold up our hands in horror at the very thought of motherhood itself, and we say, Marry; marry anything; get another name for yourself; merge your very ident.i.ty into that of some man; get a home; never mind about children; you don't have to have them; they have nothing to do with your respectability. Is it not so? Is it not so that that woman who prefers her own name and her freedom, and who exercises her highest function of motherhood, thereby becomes a thing of scorn and contumely?

And yet, how in this world can a woman do a finer, wiser, braver, truer thing than to bear a child in freedom by a carefully chosen father? It is true that we have moralists who urge wives to breed for the good of the country, but even they, while declaring that it is the duty of women to have large families, roll their eyes in horror at the thought of a woman exercising her plainest right, without first having some man, whose only interest in the matter is his fee, say some magic words over her and her master.

Oh, that marriage ceremony! And is it not pathetic to hear the women, dimly conscious of their backbones, declaring that they will not promise to obey? They will promise vehemently to love and honor, which they absolutely cannot be sure of doing, but they refuse to obey--the only thing they could safely promise to do, and which, in fact, most of them do. For, writhe and twist as they may, defy never so bravely, the conventions of the world are against them, and conform they must. Down, down they sink until they are on their knees in the mire of tradition, their heads bowed to the ugly little fetish. A woman may be a thousand times the superior of her husband, and yet she must be his slave.

And what puerile fables, what transparent lies are told to reconcile the poor slave to her lot! A man's rib! And she is the weaker vessel!