Meta Stern Lilienthal

“ To think and to achieve was unwomanly, and to have given the world a new machine of incalculable, industrial value would have been a disgrace to a lady. Such still was the prevailing conception of woman's place, as late as the last decade of the eighteenth century. But whether or not it was a woman who transformed the textile industry by inventing the cotton gin, the fact remains that this invention transformed the lives of millions of women by forever removing from the domestic fireside woman's ancient industrial tools: the spinning-wheel and the loom. ”

“ A society resting on the recognition that labor is the most important and honorable function of human life, since all life depends upon labor, will supply work for all, and will adapt its methods of work to the needs and requirements of all. There will be no men and women out of a job. There will be no men and women deprived of the necessities of life because their labor power is not wanted. Neither will there be men and women aged before their time, broken in health and spirit, unfit for social usefulness and for a normal perpetuation of the race by the dull grind of incessant drudgery. ”

“ The modern, enlightened working woman, deeply conscious of a bond of solidarity between herself and her fellow workers, keenly interested in the great, social problems of the hour, and fully aware of the connection between public life and her own personal needs, is the forerunner of a coming age, as the intelligent, ambitious, middle class mill girl of the early nineteenth century was a forerunner of present-day womanhood. ”

“ There is not enough work left in the home to-day to keep all women in it; there will be less in the future. As surely as the machine will never again be exchanged for the manual tool, as surely as the electric lamp will never again be discarded for the home-made tallow candle, so surely will woman never again abandon her larger social life for a narrow domestic one. To assume that women wilt not work under Socialism, or that they will be limited to any special kind of work, implies a grave misunderstanding of the logic and the natural applicability of Socialism. ”

“ Since our minds are always strongly influenced by the kind of work we do and the way in which we do it, woman's mind was shaped and moulded by the constant home environment. Her thoughts, her ideas, her feelings, her entire outlook upon life, were essentially domestic. To the man who always observed mother, sister, wife and daughter diligently and usefully toiling in domestic seclusion, who always saw the woman at home and always needed her at home, it seemed as natural, as self-evident that woman must be at home and nowhere else, as that a tree must be rooted in the ground. ”

“ The only domestic industries that remain in our day are cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing. But to these we have become so accustomed that we cling to them as if they were the spirit and the purpose of the home itself, Many of us cannot picture a home without a cooking stove and a washtub, and many also cannot picture the wife or mother in any other capacity than as a domestic worker. ”

“ The mill owners were even regarded as public benefactors for giving employment to women who would otherwise have been idle, and Hannah was not snubbed by her well-to-do friends for being a factory girl. Only when women, under economic pressure, began to invade the skilled trades and learned professions that had formerly been the undisputed realm of man, and when men, also under economic pressure, were compelled to compete with women on the industrial field, only then was the cry raised that woman's place is home, and that to seek employment on the broader fields of life is unwomanly. ”

“ If, under Socialism, women would be entirely released from the necessity of working, it would not mean progress but the worst kind of retrogression. It would reduce all womanhood to the level of the harem woman. It would make Socialism impossible, or-if it were possible—it would lead to the speedy degeneration and ultimate extinction of the human race. If, under Socialism, women would again devote all their energy and skill to the family and the home it would place them exactly where they have been before the age of machinery, steam-power and electricity. ”

“ THE EARLY WOMEN WORKERS
It is evident that glaring evils of factory life existed from the beginning, and that in many respects conditions were much worse than at present, especially for the women. The wage-earning woman, in the early days of the factories, stood unprotected by law, her problems ignored or disregarded by society. It was absolutely necessary, therefore, that she learn to protect herself, that she learn to employ those infallible weapons that have ever given strength to the weak: co-operation and organization. Yet the wage-earning woman was slow to learn. ”

“ But still labor is the hand-maid of capital, and still the laborer is the social inferior of the capitalist. Even the smallest, most insignificant capitalist who feeds on rents and profits considers himself superior to the man who works for wages. The propertied classes, by virtue of their property, also have the social superiority of knowledge, education and culture, of a better environment, larger opportunities, and a greater chance for life, health and happiness. ”

“ The machine, though enslaving millions of individual women, still was the liberator of womanhood. The factory door, though signifying hopeless drudgery in countless individual lives, nevertheless meant for woman the open gate-way to freedom. ”

“ The workers of Europe had no cause for conflict. They were driven into the slaughter in the name of that vicious patriotism that means profit, power and glory to the ruling classes, and suffering, misery and death to the dumb, submissive masses. Neither did the women of Europe have any cause for conflict. The best, noblest, most progressive women among all the belligerent nations even continued to exchange pledges of sympathy and good will while their men were engaged in mutual destruction. But the women were not consulted. ”

“ When the factory system, with its concomitant woman and child wage labor, and with all the crying evils of its early history, was already fully established in England, industry was still carried on under the old domestic system in the American colonies. This was due to the fact that England—eager to become mistress of the world in industry, as she was mistress of the world in discovery and conquest—jealously guarded her inventions, her machinery and her skilled artisans. ”

“ Socialism stands for the social ownership of all things that are socially used. It does not stand for the social ownership of things that are privately used. Socialism does not deny my right to own my dress and my watch, my desk and my fountain-pen. These things are used by me personally, and my private ownership of them does not cause any suffering to my fellowmen and women. But Socialism does deny my right to own a piece of land or a mine, a railroad or a factory, because these things are not used by me personally. ”

“ Historically, too, there is a powerful link between workingmen and women, because the women and the male workers of the world have borne a common lot through the ages. The women and the workers have always supplied the material wants of society, and have always been exploited and oppressed. Therefore, it is not mere chance, but an inevitable result of social and industrial evolution that the workers and the women awoke to a consciousness of their wrongs almost simultaneously, that the labor movement and the woman movement began at about the same time. ”

“ Woman and labor have been inseparably linked throughout the ages of social evolution. How could we believe that this unbroken line of evolution should suddenly be interrupted and reverted by so rational and wholesome an order of society as the one proposed by Socialism?
Women of the future will work as surely as women of the past and present. They only will work differently, just as men will work differently. Their work will be lighter, more pleasant, more rational, more conducive to human health and happiness than the work of the majority of people is at present. ”

“ For to-day every article of clothing is produced outside the home, and if every woman would refrain from making clothes for herself and her family, the world would still be clothed. But it was not so in colonial days. If the old-time housekeeper had refused to spin and weave, to cut and sew, her family would have had no clothes. In the same way they would have had no food if she had refused to cook, pickle, preserve, milk, churn, bake and brew. Industry was a domestic function and rested mainly in the hands of women. The colonial housekeeper was not only a consumer, but also a producer. ”

“ During the ages of woman's subjection how many geniuses among women may have perished unknown beside their family altar, the cooking stove? Under the present system few people have the freedom of choice. Countless abilities, talents and lofty aspirations are sacrificed day by day in silent tragedies because the lash of hunger and the grind of toil frequently make the development of talents and the realization of lofty aspirations impossible. Under Socialism there will be the largest freedom of choice for both men and women. ”

“ It must be remembered that woman was immured within the four walls of home during almost the entire history of civilization. In the heroic age of Greece we find the women spinning and weaving in their homes, while the men produced a philosophy, a literature, an art at which we still marvel to-day. We find the Roman maids and matrons spinning and weaving in the Roman houses, while the men made Rome mistress of the world. ”

“ Present-day society provides the means for education without furnishing the opportunity. It also is contented with merely feeding the mind while starving the body. The little children who are sent to school every morning cold, because they are poorly clothed and poorly housed, hungry because they are habitually underfed, tired because they must labor beside studying, make our present system of education a farce to thousands upon thousands of human beings who might become educated, efficient citizens. Socialism will feed the body as well as the mind. ”

“ When the barrier between man's work and woman's work had once been broken down, when economic necessity compelled women to seek ever new fields of employment, woman's possibilities of achievement along any line of human work had become as boundless and unlimited as man's. ”

“ All life is marked by change. Indeed, change is the very essence of life. Mankind has struggled up from tribes of naked savages to nations of civilized men, and civilization will not stop at its present stage. It will move forward and onward to ever higher and better stages. Just as the feudalism of the middle ages was displaced by modern capitalism, so will capitalism be displaced by the coming order of society: Socialism.
The Socialistic order of society will be the first to recognize that labor is the most important and honorable function of human life. ”

“ In the evening, when her day's work is done, the modern housekeeper will light the gas or—better still—turn on the electric light, and settle down to read or sew in a cheerfully lighted room. The colonial housekeeper often contented herself with sitting by the fire in a room lighted only by the red glow from the hearth. ”

“ In an industrial democracy one of the prime demands will be efficiency of all its workers. But not only will men and women be trained to work, they also will be trained to an understanding of science, of art, of literature, of human life; they will be endowed with an education and a general culture that at the present time is possible only for the leisure class. That the education of all its members is one of the most important functions of organized society is not a Socialistic discovery. Present-day society recognizes the principle of general education and endeavors to realize it. ”

“ While in colonial days every woman had sewed all the clothes for the members of her family, the rise of industry and commerce led to the establishment of the ready-made clothing business, and it was this particular line of development that made women wage-workers in this particular industry. When a young girl who was skillful with the needle could earn more by sewing shirts for a merchant than she could possibly save by making all the clothes for her father and brothers, she naturally ceased to be an individual producer for her family and became a social producer, a wage-worker. ”

“ So the application of knowledge and humane principles by a civilized society, collectively owning the means of production, will give women security as well as freedom; it will give them a nobler wifehood and a better motherhood as well as equal citizenship. Because women to-day are less free than men, because they are still hampered by social and political restrictions as well as by economic burdens, women have even more to gain than men by a new order of society. Socialism holds out its greatest promise to women. ”

“ Everything a man wore was made in his own or some other home, from the straw-hat made of meadow grass, picked dried, bleached and braided by women of his family or of his neighborhood, to the socks knitted by his wife or mother, and the shoes made by the village cobbler in his little domestic shop. In all New England, industrially so important to-day, there was not one single manufacturing town. It was during the second half of the eighteenth century that the industrial revolution set in, first in the mother country, England, and later in America. ”

“ But this spectre of the breaking of parental hearts melts away before rational investigation of what Socialism really stands for, just like the spectre of free love. The fact is that the state is caring for its children even now, without injuring family relations, by means of its public schools, its kindergartens and its playgrounds, and that state care under Socialism will only mean a further development and extension of these beneficent, desirable institutions. ”

“ The making of commodities, particularly of food and clothing, was woman's domain, her undisputed task, the very purpose of her life in the economic scheme of society. But although the colonial woman was essentially and always a producer, and although her productive work was often gainful in character, she was not an independent wage-worker in the modern sense of the word. Not the individual, but the family, was the economic unit, and the husband and father, as recognized head of the family, disposed of the earnings of the women. ”

“ Those marriages in which husband and wife have separate incomes and do not need one another for any economic reasons are often the best and most ideal even in our present society. But at present economic independence of wives is often dearly bought by work that is injurious to their motherhood, by unduly long separation from their families, by lack of proper provision for their young children, and by the added burden of household labor that women of our day cannot escape. ”

“ During the early period of settlement, women had often helped to build the rough log-cabins that became the first homesteads of their families. They had helped to manufacture the crude furnishings. They had even helped—most male occupation of all—to guard their homes, by armed force, against the attacks of the Indians. But when settled conditions prevailed, there was a clearly defined division of labor along sex lines. We must therefore look to the American farm of colonial days to obtain a true and vivid picture of man's work and woman's work before the rise of modern industry. ”

“ Wicked human nature, unrestrained, will cause men and women to rush from one marriage into another, until one cannot tell from one day to the next which man's wife a woman is, and children will not know their own parents. Let us ask ourselves seriously: Is it human nature, civilized human nature, to desire promiscuity? Would all people, or even a majority of people, seek a constant variety in the object of their affections if the law did not restrain them? One need not wait for Socialism nor even more liberal divorce laws to answer these questions in the negative. ”

“ They are a small, insignificant group of useless members of society, the parasite women, whose very uselessness and self-indulgence leads to childlessness and degeneration. Who are the women who work? All women except the parasites. In office, store and factory, in school, college and university, in kitchen and nursery, on the field and in the farm-yard, in public and private life all women are working, Not only are almost all women working to-day, but all women have worked since the dawn of human existence. Women were workers before men. They were the pioneers and originators of all industry. ”

“ We think of all the numerous endeavors to save life and improve life far more than of the one endeavor to destroy life. In the performance of the numerous peaceful ministrations that constitute public service to-day there is room for women; indeed there is a crying need for the labors of women. That is why the most progressive countries of the world are fast admitting their women to equal citizenship.
The fundamental principle of Socialistic society will be universal peace. The greed of gain, the desire to rob one's fellowmen, has been a prime cause of almost all wars past and present. ”