I.
NOTHING marks the progress of the world more than its advance in its methods of benevolence. As to the spirit of such work, all advance must be in the direction of the grandly simple model set forth centuries ago in a parable of exceeding tenderness—help for those who need help, as they need it; no more, no less. As to the methods of good-will, they are often a return to antique forms—the hospital, the wayfarer’s house, the retreat for the aged and homeless.
Far be it from me to decry the real good of our present institutions, which do more to make the world tolerable than we dream, even for ourselves. If our roads and the steps to our picture galleries are not overrun with festering beggars, it is thanks to the county house and the asylums. Yet, still, it remains that for children there is no charity like that which took the orphan or the apprentice directly into the family, or gave him to kindly, well-bred religious teachers from whom he received training more close and parental than that of paid nurses and superintendents can ever be.
For women we have the higher education and the lower, almost without price. The formulated maxim of society to-day is, that the only help necessary is to provide training for young women. All other sorts of help are dismissed as useless and mischievous. This is the favorite strain of ideas reported from addresses at ladies’ clubs and alumnae dinners. As the cherished views of women not used to having their opinions treated lightly, we may follow their intentions to their results. And the very first that confronts one dealing with the world at first hand, and not from novels and reviews, is one that the comfortable people, who prescribe education as the panacea for all evils not connected with themselves, singularly overlook.
Educate a woman, these wise people say, and you fit her to command a liberal income in the higher professions. Train her in the minor arts and callings, and her livelihood is insured. Would to heaven it were so! But education has not meant success for men, judging from the crowd of poor lawyers and physicians, not by any means poor in merit, that our best colleges produce, and the scores of English and German university men you may find struggling for every chance of employment, from reporting to working in cracker bakeries. There is hardly work enough in the world for the men educated for it; and the invasion of women into the market-place can only increase the competition to a fearful pass.
That women have every right to work and earn a living goes without saying. We have to deal with consequences, with facts as they are, not as we wish them to be. When fifty women apply for every opening on the press, as contributor, correspondent, or department editor; when every paying newspaper and press agency is loaded down with manuscript, what follows? The best-known writers, women whose wit, experience, and knowledge of society best fits them for their work, complain that they can not receive a third of the prices paid for articles in 1880. One of the three foremost women on the newspapers to-day, a woman whose wealth makes it remarkable that she should be in that gallery at all, was surprised when the equally wealthy proprietor of an old city daily desired her to write for five dollars a letter, because he had “so many applications from women whose work compared with her own, who were glad to work at that rate.” She took the place presumably at a compromise rate.
“Why should I pay your prices?” the editor and proprietor of the oldest Boston society paper said to a well-trained writer. “I run newspapers to make money, and there are any number of women on Beacon Street and Back Bay glad to send me work at three dollars a column to pay for their gloves, and plenty of young lawyers on Court Street willing to do the same to get something to eat.” If this is what Harvard and the higher education prepares for us all, I fear we will come to think as contemptuously of clerks and students as any strong-handed baron of the Middle Ages.
“I think it is better to have all I can do at half price, than to ask more and do less,” a useful and popular writer on the staff of a leading magazine said to me three years ago. She thought herself fortunate in being able to write day and evening, but the last word from her was that she had broken down, insane from overwork.
The case is no better with artists or musicians. I see well-born women, carefully educated, well connected, living at the top of business blocks, cooking and sleeping in their studios, often keeping their rooms a week at a time without passing the endless stairs to the street, growing thin and haggard with privation, and toiling ceaselessly at their brushes as any shopworker at her sewing machine. The difference between the two grades of work is only in the cleverness of the craftswoman, not in the price paid, or the close conditions of labor. Add to this the difficulty of getting paid for art work, the trickery that rich dealers are not at all above practicing on women as well as men artists—keeping a picture sent for sale till some cheaper hand can copy it, and then returning the original as unsalable, borrowing a pretty design and having it adopted by a clever copyist—and you have a glimpse of the vexations that wring the souls and impoverish the lives of artists.
As for teachers, ask any educational agency for the chances of employment. There are a hundred applicants for every vacancy likely to occur in the next five years, and this hundred is doubled every other year by the shoals of girls graduating from normal schools. Women doctors are nearly as badly off as artists, though they usually have some capital to begin on. But when the little inheritance from father or grandfather is spent in waiting, the young doctor must live on her own pellets if she is a homœpath, or give services for board in country resorts, as the custom is.
In all vocations, the effect of crowding them with the graduates of American training schools, competing with the yet more carefully drilled adventurous women from continental homes, must be to cut down the rates of work, and bring them to an East Indian standard—merely enough for covering rice and ghee; leaving out, perhaps, a thousand people of genius in all professions over the globe, and dividing work and wages among the tens of thousands qualified, it is doubtful if the rate for skilled labor of any sort would average much over a dollar a day.
These are facts, my masters, not at all carrying out the pretty pictures of the story writers, whose girly-girls in family disaster and loss of property have only to pick up their pens and write a magazine article, or go into fruit-raising, or beekeeping, and buy a farm, and new-furnish the house the first season on the profits. Might these redoubtable young women but condescend to give the rest of the world some inkling of their secret of success! Every year the competition of real life grows more intense, till no favorite with gifts and genius feels secure in her place, or keeps it but at cost of sleepless vigilance and effort.
The thousand successes are offset by tens of thousands of women to whom life is a constant strain of body and of thought, with only lightening enough of the toil to render it endurable. It is enough to know, from medical reports, that the majority of cultivated women are aged at fifty, with the wrinkles and gray hair fit for seventy-five, and soon after die of overstrain, or break down in mind. Imbecility and hysteria increase, to say nothing of insanity, while the standard of effective labor, intellectual and physical, rapidly lowers, because the stamina of the race is worn out.
What comes between the training and the end, the histories of women’s lives, of a grade above the working class, that demands so much deserved pity, I spare you. For twenty years I have known the lives of these self-dependent women, their struggles, their bafflings, their partial successes. I have never taken a lantern and gone out into the highways to pick out the chief sufferers and relate their tale. I have but remembered what has come under my own eye, what others know and exclaim at for the moment and the next hour have forgotten. Should I write these histories of heartbreak, madness, and the grave, no newspaper would print a recital so sombre; the world would put up its hands begging to be spared the shock to its sensibilities. Indeed, such stories are too sacred to be told the common ear, even of charity. One must have suffered to understand them.
The most of the people in the world are like the amiable parent told of in my young days, who, wakened by his child crying with the toothache, rose and spanked it into quiet, and returned to his slumbers. The better part of educated men and women know the truth of these bitter experiences—doctors, lawyers, the few ministers who have right to their calling, and the rare women like Mrs. Thomas H. Burton, the Princess Alice, and some of the most refined women of society to-day, to whom, as to Récamier, “friendlessness and misfortune have the same attraction that favor and success have for vulgar souls.” Let it suffice that for those clear spirits, who know best the history of their kind and day, the suffering of one-half the world is not so annoying as the heedlessness of the other half, seeing which one is persuaded that we are hardly so far from the Dark Ages as the world flatters itself, and civilization scarce registers an hour past the dawn. But it is not God’s will that this obscurity and indifference should last one moment longer than hearts can be found to see and carry out the work of blessing. The help for the worst woes of dependent women is at hand.
II.
The need of woman for protection is old as the race. The Mediæval Age, in its direct fashions of striking at evil, left lessons for all-coming time, and nothing better has been devised for the great army of superfluous women than the original idea of the convent. The word means simply a gathering, a community, and was a body of women collected for protection and support, in rude times when superfluous women were got rid of with less decency than dispatch. Within strong walls they were safe from marauders, and gave themselves to religion and needlework, which were the two occupations of the sex in castle bower as well as convent cell. Later, all feminine arts flourished in conventual soil. The confectionery and pastry of convents was in high repute, as it is in Spanish and South American countries today. Cordials, perfumes, preserves, embroideries, the most costly illuminating and miniature painting, all swelled the convent income; and convent gardens, where bushels of rose leaves were gathered for distilling and wall fruit hid the stones, were vignettes of Eden.
Vows and austerities are not inherent in convent life, nor even a religious profession. The eyes of the destitute and struggling have ever turned to the idea of the convent as a haven of rest and shelter, an idea not by any means carried out within its walls, yet somehow destined to work out its fulfillment. The peaceful, orderly lives of communities have a fascination for outsiders, and with all their drawbacks the Shaker and Mennonite villages have been a very sanctuary to friendless families. Food, generous in kind and quantity, comfort and neatness, company and support, the sense of security for life in pure air and peaceful scenes, work, steady but not oppressive, fill the measure of human wants more nearly than the rest of life can without these. Moreover, no law of nature prevents communities from adding grace and freedom to their lives if they elect. Why should not shrewdness and liberality seize the best part of convent and community systems, and improve them after an enlightened fashion? Thrift and simplicity are no blood kin to superstition and vagary. To seize and improve on these models is what the new Country Homes for Women propose to do.
The plan is simple but comprehensive. A dwelling-house, with dormitories, studios, and workshops, gardens, orchard, and greenhouse, poultry yard and apiary, is to become the home of dependent women of good behavior, refinement, and intelligence. There they will be received and trained in such crafts as they prove best fit for—gardening, fruit-raising, wood-working, preserving and confectionery, fine printing and binding, or more familiar works of the needle and decorative art; those strictly unable to pay for board and training at the very low rates giving their services in return, when trained, to cancel the debt. This opens the door for some of the ablest women, who are also the poorest in purse.
But the house is not designed for a mere training school, but a home for life for women who desire its shelter, and can either pay for it or give a certain amount of work in return. It offers training of a sort not easily found by women, especially in light handicrafts, shelters the needy pupil while teaching her, taking her finished services in payment, and afterward still offers such a home and certainty of support as most women dream of and never find, if she chooses to remain and pay for it in work or money, at the lowest cost.
A girl or woman of uncertain age, without income, as yet untrained to business of any sort, presents herself; just two conditions are required—good behavior of a sort to be acceptable to other ladies and willingness to work. She finds a quiet, attractive country house, not at all like an institution, near a rural station, in easy reach of city lessons, markets, and sales-rooms. She has a room with closet, simply and comfortably fitted, well ventilated, and warmed in winter. The large sitting-room and dining-room are what they would be in a well-ordered family—charming as artistic taste can make inexpensive furnishing, with windows full of flowers, and telling decorative touches. A choice library and music are matters of course; a resident doctor is not so often found, though necessary in a houseful of women. Attic studios are shared by artists, a sunny workshop with latticed casements, planing bench, lathe and joiner’s tools ranking as much a studio as any of them, and one of the most profitable.
Kitchen, pantry, and confectionery, or, in old-fashioned phrase, the still-rooms, are to be as pleasing as any rooms in the house, that work in them may share attractiveness. They are planned to make work light, with a dozen contrivances for comfort specially designed for the house. Imagine a kitchen where, with ventilating hood and patent cooker, the dinner for fifty persons goes on in midsummer without perceptibly heating the room! Where a polished white-wood floor, a tile-finish wainscot, swing windows that let sweet brier in, and low Shaker chairs really tempt one to join the pea-shelling or berry-hulling there! One side is a cool little dairy and ice-room, where the making of “dulcet creams,” mousses, whips, and glacés is in order; a dainty tiled closet is for mysteries of distilling sweet waters, and putting up herbs, for the herbary in the garden is counted as a source of revenue, and a favorite branch of garden work with women.
Without, a skillful gardener teaches to prune and graft, dig, weed, and transplant in the most careful fashion, and women will find that with sharp, light tools, shade hats, flannel blouse suits, gauntlets and cork-soled shoes, gardening has nothing dreadful. Even weeding a strawberry bed is light work, with a low cricket to sit on, a mat to kneel on, and leave to come in by eleven in the forenoon till noon heat is over.
Among these avocations, the woman whose only idea is that she must earn her bread quickly finds, or practiced eyes find for her, what she can best do. Perhaps she has some gift of gardening or fancy work, not enough to depend on in the world. Here she learns how to turn it to account, how to dispatch things in a business manner, and make work salable, how to favor herself, and how to give a good account of herself in a day’s work. At first she may or may not be worth her salt to any one, but example, the working spirit about her, the stimulus of good fare and relief from anxiety are all but irresistible, and with some experienced person at hand to say, “Just here you fail,” or, “This should be so,” the least capable wake up to creditable, profitable performance.
Nor is she turned off with her new-found craft to peddle her work as best she may, unused to buying or selling, with the chance of starving over her unsold ware. This work of standard quality, is taken at a fixed value, and credited against her board and clothing, which, if desired, is supplied at cost. Some of this work is to be turned in directly to the needs of the house, especially sewing for other inmates, upholstering and repairing, or housekeeping help and gardening, for most of the supplies will be grown on the place. The rest will be sold by experienced hands, and the high quality of everything offered will make this no uncertain profit. All over her expenses, the rates of which are fixed and definite, goes to the worker, just as if she gave her work to any dealer.
III.
The central idea of the new plan is, not training alone, but protection, and so much help as the strongest of us are the better for, through life. Ordinary systems give the girl or woman three months’ to three years’ training in classes, and then throw her out in a world of difficulties and dishonesties to struggle or sink as she may. The human being can not be finished off in any class course for the conduct of life, and the protectory aims to do thoroughly what various systems do partially and timidly. It really often seems as if the societies for the benefit of women were afraid of doing as much good as they might. The protectory will train women, not by hasty class lessons, but by the daily, hourly supervision and working with the teacher, which is the only training worth the name. It lends the sagacity of experienced brains to the beginner in her small business venture with the world, and when fairly started, if she chooses to remain in its shelter, paying with her work or her money as is convenient, it is her home, as far as any roof can be that is not her own or her father’s house. If she finds in herself spirit and aptness for independence, with an opening for her talents in the common ways, she goes freely, leaving and taking a blessing.
Fear not that any of this care will injure the fiber of her spirit, and lead to a weak dependence. There is a vast difference between the aid that develops and the aid that weakens, a distinction that seems to wholly escape the propounders of the self-help doctrine. A woman is the better fitted to act for herself when she has so absorbed the ways and words of experts that she knows precisely what to do and say, or what is within her strength and what beyond it. There is sad lack of penetration and judgment in the bestower when help disables instead of refreshing.
The great thing in the new plan, which is not to be lost sight of, and which guards against all weakening of moral fiber, is that benefits are to be scrupulously paid for in money or work, and that of no indifferent sort. Such a house is the last place where a fribble, or viewy, useless enthusiast will find herself at home. It is possible that such a one, seeing the pleasure of well-ordered busy lives, would be shamed out of her uselessness, and take life in earnest. It is more than likely that a serene, healthful existence with steady, not burdensome, duties would cure meager souls of their vapors and hysterical tendencies, and bring women to a saner, sweeter experience than their present ideals.
If such a protectory offers women more for their labor than they can receive in any other way, it is no more than can be carried out by wise administration. Country homes, giving women the benefit of pure air, in reach of the city for business advantages, cost one-tenth that the same accommodation would in town. The gardens offer the best work for many women, especially school-teachers desiring change of occupation, and it is the suggestion of a worn-out teacher that gave prominence to this part of the scheme.
Besides this, gardens and greenhouse will furnish much of the food for the year, and sales of fruit and flowers pay for the rest as well as for lighting the house. It was significant that the plan of raising flowers was no more than mentioned when a Boston florist desired to engage all that could be brought, and this not out of sympathy for the undertaking, but as a mere business advantage.
Careful estimates for buildings, cost of living, and instruction prove that twenty-five women and over can be provided with the best training and every comfort essential to a refined person, including medical care in common ailments, for less than two hundred dollars a year. No woman alone can command such advantages for twice the sum, and when this is paid, not by her unassisted earnings alone, but by her salable work, the assurance of comfort and shelter is beyond price. The protectory desires to assure women that whosoever will work shall eat, and share the good of the land. No institution fare is contemplated, but a scale of living that will compare with that of the best women’s colleges. Good living in every sense is the foundation idea of these country communities for women.
This is no mere fancy sketch. A convent, a convening in its real meaning, without rigor, whose piety betrays itself in good work, a community where personal rights are sacred and distinct, are things not impossible in this age of the world. Nor is the world without notable thrift which yet masks the angles of its staircases with flowers and delights in soft colors and dainty linen sweet with lavender; which can be generous as well as frugal in the right place. Nor is it wanting in that essence of ladyhood and Christianity that makes it possible even for women to live together, not in any strained pretense of homes or sisterhoods, but in the courtesy, fairness, and honor that knits strangers together and gives the only true home feeling after we leave our mother’s knee. Is humanity, is womanhood, too poor for such community of needs and help?
