Sans-culotte

“ Even the young girls, though often with lovely features, look pale, thin, and haggard. I do not remember to have seen in any single instance among the poor, a specimen of the plump, rosy, laughing physiognomy so common among our cottage girls. The horror of domestic service, which the reality of slavery, and the fable of equality, have generated, excludes the young women from that sure and most comfortable resource of decent English girls; and the consequence is, that with a most irreverend freedom of manner to the parents, the daughters are, to the full extent of the word, domestic slaves. ”

“ But what about working women? what about the daughters, sisters and wives of working men, out, it may be, on an errand of mercy at night? and what, most of all, of that girl whose father, mother, friends are dead or far away, who is struggling hard, in a hard world, to live uprightly and justly by the work of her own hands,—is she in no danger of this law? Lonely and friendless, and poor, is she in no danger of a false accusation from malice or from error? especially since under this law homeless girls are particularly marked out as just subjects for its operation ”

“ If some of them would try what life is like when it consists of making shirts at three halfpence each (cotton not provided) , and starving on the money earned, they would perhaps learn to speak more gently of "those horrid women". Lack of bread makes many a girl sell herself, and, once fallen, she is doomed. On the one side are self-respect, incessant toil, starvation; on the other side prostitution, amusement, plenty. ”

“ The saddest feature here is that there really is nothing by which these women can earn an independent livelihood for themselves and their children, no manufacturing establishments, no free schools to teach. Women here, as everywhere, must be able to live honestly and honorably without the aid of men, before it can be possible to save the masses of them from entering into polygamy or prostitution, legal or illegal. Whichever way I turn, whatever phase of social life presents itself, the same conclusion comes: "Independent bread alone can redeem woman from her curse of subjection to man." ”

“ From Maine, New Hampshire and other States; from the Canadas and beyond the seas, girls disgusted with or starved out of household service, go to factories; thence to the clothing marts of cities; thence—the path thither strewn with the diseased, the dying and the dead, such is the reluctance of nature—they crowd the swiftly descending ways of prostitution! And though the average length of life there is but four years, statistics show that the "social evil" is less destructive to woman's physical beauty and vitality than the labor system as now organized. ”

“ Nevertheless, in Miss Agnes de Lima's report of conditions in Passaic, New Jersey, we find the same tale of penalized, prostrate motherhood, bearing the crushing burden of economic injustice and cruelty; the same blind but overpowering instincts of love and hunger driving young women into the factories to work, night in and night out, to support their procession of uncared for and undernourished babies. It is the married women with young children who work on the inferno-like shifts. They are driven to it by the low wages of their husbands. ”

“ The ideas and institutions by which the accident of sex is made the groundwork of an inequality of legal rights, and a forced dissimilarity of social functions, must ere long be recognised as the greatest hindrance to moral, social, and even intellectual improvement. On the present occasion I shall only indicate, among the probable consequences of the industrial and social independence of women, a great diminution of the evil of overpopulation. ”

“ And yet, gentlemen, you expect your wives, the creatures you say you respect and love, to wear the longest skirts and the highest necked clothing, in order to conceal the obscene human body. There is no society for the prevention of cruelty to women. ”

“ We emphasized the consideration that 'woman's physical structure and the performance of maternal functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence' and that her physical well being 'becomes an object of public interest and care in order to preserve the strength and vigor of the race.' We emphasized the need of protecting women against oppression despite her possession of contractual rights. ”

“ Their chances of marrying favourably seem as few as those of the schoolmistresses in the ranks above them. Hand-sewing predisposes them to lung diseases, and machine-sewing to affections more pitiable still; and their pay for it all is miserable,—a shame to the whole race, since all its clothing and adorning come through their defrauded fingers. It is high time that the free and favoured of the sex—the women who have comfortable homes provided for them by their husbands or fathers—should feel a solicitude for these victims of the needle, and should take active measures for their relief. ”

“ And the State has divided the loaves and fishes with the Church, the magistrates, like the priests take marriage fees; the two fetters of Authority have gone into partnership in the business of granting patentrights to parents for the privilege of reproducing themselves, and the State cries as the Church cried of old, and cries now: "See how we protect women!" The State has done more. It has often been said to me, by women with decent masters, who had no idea of the outrages practiced on their less fortunate sisters, "Why don't the wives leave?" ”

“ These homeless babes and children, these neglected boys and girls, these reckless shop and factory girls, are generally the pain and menace that they are because they have not had, as individuals, that guidance and affection of women to which each has a natural right. No collective work, however good it may be, can protect or guide these children properly. ”

“ We thus find an immense mass of young women gradually corrupted from childhood, rendered coarse and reckless, the modesty of girlhood destroyed, the reserve of maidenhood changed to bold, often indecent, behaviour. No one accustomed to walk freely about our streets, to watch children at play, to observe the amusements and free gatherings of the poorer classes, can fail to see the signs of degraded sex. ”

“ The law allowed these women relief of a certain very inadequate kind, but for herself and one child it offered no relief except the workhouse. Even if the woman had a baby at her breast she was regarded, under the law, as an able-bodied man. Women, we are told, should stay at home and take care of their children. I used to astound my men colleagues by saying to them: "When women have the vote they will see that mothers can stay at home and care for their children. You men have made it impossible for these mothers to do that." ”

“ Many employers of female labour do not scruple to make this plain to the women who apply to them for situations. No wonder that the bourgeoisie recognises prostitution as a "necessary evil." "Necessary" to capitalism, which grows fat upon it!
Bitter want drives countless wives and daughters to this horrible resource as the one means of warding off starvation; and before all working women, existing in the terrible uncertainty which is now the condition of working class life, is always the possibility of having some day to make the ghastly choice between shame and starvation. ”

“ In the more wealthy circles, the murderous fashions of dress make terrible havoc with the health of young girls, while impure air, unhealthful food and condiments, lack of exercise, and over-stimulation of brain and nerves, are completing the ruin of health and family hopes.
The state of domestic service is another element that is undermining the family state. Disgraced by the stigma of our late slavery, and by the influx into our kitchens of ignorant and uncleanly foreigners, American women forsake home circles for the unhealthful shops and mills. ”

“ What then are the means of subsistence for women destitute of fortune? The distaff, or else their charms if they have any. Yes, prostitution more or less glossed over is their only resource, which philosophy again contests to them; this is the abject fate to which they are reduced by this civilization, this conjugal slavery which they have not even thought of attacking. ”

“ We have sent our boys out into the world, but we have kept our girls at home, refusing to allow them to rough it with husbands and brothers or to endure the least hardness. The consequence is that we have nearly a million of surplus women in the old country, while in America, and in our own colonies, we have a corresponding surplus of men, with all the evil moral consequences that belong to a disproportion between the sexes. ”

“ Yet when I hear people, of both sexes, speak of poverty as a greater calamity than death, I am led to think that this dread of poverty does really exist among both sexes. And there are reasons for believing that some females, bred in fashionable life, look forward to matrimony as a state, of such entire exemption from care and labor, and of such uninterrupted ease, that they would prefer celibacy and even death to those duties which scripture, and reason, and common sense, appear to me to enjoin. ”

“ One consequence of this incapacity in poor women is, that the professional class of slop-workers has grown to what we have seen it. Besides the army and navy, there is almost the whole range of our labouring classes to be supplied with cheap garments, ready made; and thus, while the wives and daughters, who ought to be making the shirts, are unable to do it, there are thousands of needlewomen slaving at it day and night, for a hire which does not give them bread.
Even so, there is more good needlework done in cottages than in the homes of factory workers. ”

“ Think of the double social standard the enslavement of our sex has evolved. Women considering themselves very pure and very moral, will sneer at the street-walker, yet admit to their homes the very men who victimized the street-walker. Men, at their best, will pity the prostitute, while they themselves are the worst kind of prostitutes. ”

“ If this marriage fails and she is forced to work within her household, or, even worse, if poverty compels her to work in the fields, or add her mite gained by most heavy labour to help fill the many eager mouths at home, then she should have our pity. We have seen the small-footed woman pulling heavy boats along the tow-paths, or leaning on their hoes to rest their tired feet while working in the fields of cotton. To her each day is a day of pain, and this new law forbidding the binding of the feet of children will come as a blessing from the gods. ”

“ The development of sick nursing since Florence Nightingale, the experience of work among prostitutes since Josephine Butler, and the study of medicine since Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake, had revealed to an increasing number of women the dreadful consequences of a moral standard which indulged men and degraded women. Prostitution appears to the Suffragist to be a direct consequence of the political supremacy of one sex over the other, to be the result of that encouragement of egoism which always follows the disposition of the political affairs of one class by another. ”

“ The Vaertings have remarked that the drudgery connected with the care of children is invariably imposed by the dominant upon the subject sex; a view which is in perfect consonance with what we know of the general human willingness to transfer to other shoulders the burden of uninteresting though necessary labour. Since women have most often been subject, they have most often been forced to undertake this drudgery, either in lieu of or in addition to the labour of providing food and shelter for their families. ”

“ The dreary drudgery, the intense physical labor required of the colonial housewife was of such a nature that the woman of to-day can scarcely comprehend it. Aside from the astonishing number of child-births and child-deaths, aside too from the natural privations, dangers, ravages of war, accidents and diseases, incident to the settlement of a new country, there was the constant drain upon the woman's physical strength through lack of those household conveniences which every home maker now considers mere necessities. ”

“ I should like to hear somebody openly enunciating the doctrine (it is already implied in much that is written on the subject) —"It is necessary to society that women should marry and produce children. They will not do so unless they are compelled. Therefore it is necessary to compel them." The merits of the case would then be clearly defined. It would be exactly that of the slaveholders of South Carolina and Louisiana. "It is necessary that cotton and sugar should be grown. White men cannot produce them. Negroes will not, for any wages which we choose to give. ”

“ Sister mine, my eyes have been opened to many evils existing in this world, and the starvation of woman’s sex-nature until marriage, when the starvation generally changes to surfeit and sex slavery is one of the greatest evils that this world knows. A few men are intelligent and noble enough to understand this; men who suffer almost as much from this accursed system as do most women, and, little girl, your Owen was one of these noble men. After all you have told me about yourself and him I am rather surprised you did not dare the world and claim your own.”
“Imelda! ”

“ It is the sheltered women, indeed, who are peculiarly in danger; those women whose preparation for the struggle to wrest a living from economic injustice has consisted in waiting for men to marry and support them. The parent who, in a world where celibacy and prostitution are on the [Pg 142] increase, fails to give a girl child education or training which will enable her to get her living by her own efforts, forces her to take a dangerous risk ”