The Arena

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The day needs giants; it produces pigmies. It needs men to fight; it
produces men to run. It needs women with minds broad enough to think
and hearts large enough to love. It needs motherhood that, while it
bends protectingly over the cradle of its own child, reaches out a
mother-heart to all the suffering childhood of the race. It needs the
capacity for heroism; it yields the tendency to cowardice. In the
midst of learning, ignorance triumphs, vice rules, and sensualism
thrives; and all this, not because of education, but in spite of it.
And when we consider that our schools in their lower grades, our
kindergartens and our primary and Sunday schools, take the infant mind
before the tendency to vice has had any chance for development, and
that the next higher grades take them on through successive years,
without being able to prevent such results as these mentioned above,
we naturally feel that, at the very outset, our educational system
must be wrong. However it may be suited to the ideal conditions it
cannot be adapted to the average human creature, taken exactly as he
is. The lack, which begins at the very basis of our so-called
intelligent discipline, runs through the whole, in constantly
increasing ratio. Brain is stimulated, and heart and soul are left to
starve, and nothing is more neglected than the cunning of the hand.
Even where some attempt is made at the training of the whole nature,
it is done without recognition of the infinite variety in the human
mind. Processes ought to be adapted, not only to the universal but to
the individual need. It does not follow that the universal need is
necessarily or invariably unlike the individual need, or that
individual needs are always identical, but any system of education
that gives, for a great variety of minds, precisely the same course of
training, is sure to be, for a majority of those minds, a pitiful and
conspicuous failure.

What then? Shall we have a separate school for every child? Shall we
have a special teacher for each mind? That would probably be
impossible, but we certainly should have so small a number of pupils
under each teacher that she (and we are taking it for granted that the
teachers of little children will largely be women) may be able to
study the whole nature of every little one committed to her care. She
should be not only in communication, but in real _communion_ with the
mother; should know the child's mental and moral inheritance, and, in
as far as her own watchful care and the help of the family physician
may enable her to do so, she should understand its physical
constitution. She should acquaint herself with the temperament, the
habits, the degree of affection, and the little germs of spiritual
insight and inspiration, all of which go to make up the nature of the
little creature in her charge. If she be the true teacher, she should
combine the threefold duties of mother, instructor, and physician for
the young life unfolding in her care. If she has not the heart to love
the child and to let the child love her, and so to lay foundation for
the larger loving, that, by and by, shall out-reach and take in the
whole humanity of God, then we will not say she has mistaken her
calling, but her own process of education has been defective and she
has much to learn.

Such threefold development for heart, hand, and brain of the little
child makes preparation for the next higher steps of educational work.
Whatever form the training may assume, the individuality of the human
soul should be kept inviolate. That individuality betrays itself in
many ways; by emotion and sentiment, by quickness or dullness of
perception, and above all, by preferences and dislikes. These minute
indications as to just what elements of spirit and mind have entered
into the nature of the child, are the little delicate fibres that show
the texture of the human soul with which we have to deal. The child
learns too soon to draw in and hide the frail, sensitive tendrils that
indicate that the life of the soul-plant is feeling its way toward the
light of God.

In the primary school, the teacher (and sometimes in the cradle, the
mother, who is, whether she would have it so or not, the child's first
teacher) begins the process of training by which the little one is
made to do as others do, to say what others say, and to conceal the
fact that it has any inward life or impulses that are not the same as
those of other children.

Instead of being able to read the God-given signs as to what the
infant nature really requires, we give it instead an arbitrary supply,
based upon what we think it ought to need, and then marvel that it
does not thrive upon its unnatural diet. We have not supplied what it
craved but that which, from our preconceived notion, we thought it
ought to want.

This process of applying our rule and line to the mind goes farther
and bears harder upon the student with every succeeding year, until,
long before the so-called education is completed, three quarters of
the students have lost the consciousness that they ever cared, or ever
_could_ have cared, for anything except that which the class supplied.
To be what the class is, to do what the class does, to be satisfied
with knowing what the class knows, to have lost the sense of the value
of the thing to be gained, and to measure by false standards, comes to
be the rule, until the conceit of knowledge takes the place of the
modesty of conscious ignorance, and the student becomes a drop in the
annual out-pouring stream of so-called teachers, many of whom, in the
highest sense, have never been genuine students at all.

Searching for causes of such results, we cannot fail to see that much
of this dead sameness of intellectual character is due to our habit of
educating in masses. We make an Arab feast of our knowledge. A dish is
prepared that contains something that might be strengthening for each
partaker. With hands more or less clean, students select their savory
morsels from the sop. As in the Arab family, for old and young, for
the babe in arms, and the strong man from his field of toil, the
provision is the same, so in all our class-work we have the sameness
of provision with almost as great disparity of capacity and need. If,
out of the whole mental "mess of pottage" that can be taken which
builds the student up in true wisdom and knowledge, it is fortunate;
but if nothing is assimilated on which the mind could truly thrive, no
fault is found with the provision, nor is resultant ignorance
considered to be specially worthy of blame.

The evil effects of educating in masses, or in classes, is
sufficiently apparent to cause us to consider the question whether
there is any possible remedy,--whether there could be a substitution
of individual for general training, or a combination of the two that
would produce a better result. That student is losing ground as an
individual who comes to be considered or to consider himself as simply
a factor of a class. If the general teaching must be that which is
applicable to the entire class, there should also be provision for
instruction that could be adapted to the individual need, and as great
effort as is made to adapt class work to the general need should be
made in the special direction also. But the objection arises that the
modern teacher is not able to work in both directions in the time
allotted for student life. We are very well aware that we have not yet
passed the stage where the value of the teacher's work is measured by
the number of hours in which he is engaged in the classroom. Trustees,
as a whole, pay for the professor's full time, and expect it to be
fully employed. Neither are the educators many who would know what to
do if simply let loose among students and left free to make their best
impressions upon the minds of the young.

To many teachers the mind of youth is, in reality, an unexplored
region, and until we have a change in this respect, and learn that the
knowledge of books is only the beginning of wisdom, and that the true
knowledge must include also that of the living book,--the student
entrusted to our care,--we have scarcely learned the alphabet of true
education.

The day will come, though it may be long in coming, when every
institution of learning will have, besides its technical teachers, its
lecturers and its conductors of recitations,--one man or one woman, or
as many men and women as are needed, whose special province it will be
to study the individual temperament, to discover native tendencies,
tastes, and capacities of the mind, and whose knowledge will be true
wisdom in the sense that they will know not only how to ascertain, but
how to supply real needs.

That cramping and stifling of natural tastes, which is now so marked a
feature of school training, will be replaced by the cultivation of
every good natural ability, and the suppression of only that which in
itself is evil. Quite too often, even in this latter day, the
restraint is put upon the natural powers, simply because their
development calls for extra labor and special trouble, or because
these powers indicate training in lines of work not being attempted by
the class.

Let the routine work continue to be done, and, if necessary, in the
routine fashion, but let every institution have on its Faculty one
soul, at least, whose province is not to crush, but to cultivate and
develop individual traits of mind and character. Such an instructor
must not be ignorant of books, but that intricate book, the human
heart, should be his special study, and he should know, not only what
human beings are, but should be able to help them to grow into what
God meant them to be. Such a man with a large and sympathetic heart
that can be hospitable to boyhood as it is, will do more toward the
moulding of genuine manhood than can a dozen professors of the
ordinary type. One such woman in every institution for the education
of girls holds really the future destiny of those girls in her own
hand, for her life among them could have but one dominant
desire,--that of helping them to be the thing God meant. Practically
living out that desire she becomes, not the restraint and destroyer of
their natural vitality of thought and feeling, but the guide and
director of all their native forces into every beautiful field of
learning, and into the highest type of development possible for woman,
under present limitations, to attain.

Whether we recognize the fact or not, there is not a phase of our
social or national life that is unaffected by the lack of proper
development of individuality. The whole tendency of our civilization
has been in the direction of making people, as nearly as possible,
like other people. Characters of marked individuality are relegated to
the class of so-called cranks. To be above the dead level of general
sentiment and attainment is to be in decidedly bad form. This work of
taking out of people the characteristics placed within them by nature,
and making them over into the convenient and conventional types that
think as others think, and do what others do, has marked our
civilization from its earlier stages, and the more civilized we become
the more pronounced are the results. Among these results are great
loss of spiritual and mental vitality. It is time to call a halt, to
change our methods, or to supplement them by methods of individual
training. The beginning of such a work will mark an educational era,
the inception of which should not be longer delayed.

THE WORKING-WOMEN OF TO-DAY.

BY HELEN CAMPBELL.

The story of working-women, of those women forced by changes in
industrial and social conditions into occupations outside the home, is
limited to the last hundred years. The division of labor resulting in
the factory system, and the multiplication of trades, has opened many
employments hitherto unknown, in which the use of female labor has
become almost a necessity. Woman has had her share of work from the
beginning, often much more than her share, but it ran usually in the
simple lines of household requirements; and if it chanced, here and
there, to be of larger scope, this was, after all, mostly tentative.
Work with deliberate intent to earn a living is chiefly a fact of the
nineteenth century, and any tangible estimate of woman as a competitor
of man in the struggle for existence must be based upon the facts of
the past hundred years. It is within hardly more than a generation
that the importance of the subject has become plain, and now we are
all questioning as to what is included in the life of the
working-woman; what is her economic and social condition; what are her
rights and her wrongs; what bearing have they on society at large, and
what concern is it of ours why or how she works, or what wage she
receives?

We are well aware that humanity has always had the enforced work of
women as an essential part of its development, enforced not by law but
by the necessities of life. In any new country, the work of women is a
vital factor in its success or failure, in its growth and general
prosperity; and in the early days of our own country this was far
truer than now. There were then no trades open to women, because the
organization of society was much less complex than it now is, and the
family represented a union of trades. This had been the case in
England and, indeed, in all civilized countries, and is even true of
those early days when skins were all that was needed, and thorns were
the only needles and pins. But from the day of that disastrous
experience in the Garden, clothing, and the necessities involved in
it, has been the synonym of sorrow for women, and the needle stands as
the visible token of disaster, sorrow, and wrong of every order--"the
asp upon the breast of the poor."

Civilization has always in the nature of things meant war. It is only
out of the conflict of class with class, interest with interest, that
advance comes. "Strife is the father of all things and the king of all
things," was the word of Heraclitus the Wise. "It hath brought forth
some as gods and others as men, and hath made some bond and others
free. When Homer prayed that strife might depart from amongst gods and
men, he wist not that he was cursing the birth of all things, for all
things have their birth in war and enmity."

It is only in this later day that we begin to realize other
possibilities, and to wonder if the world has not had enough of wars
and tumults, and cannot bring about the desired end without further
expenditure of blood and tears. With war has ever been, and ever will
be, the forcing of women left with no breadwinner into the ranks of
the earners, and only later centuries have given an opportunity beyond
domestic service. It is the last fifty years that has suddenly opened
up the myriad possibilities in the more than four hundred trades into
which women have thronged.

The field is so enormous that one is tempted aside from the real point
at issue. What we have to do is to consider work for women as a whole,
with all that it involves for womankind. It is not alone the worker
herself, but the woman who uses the product of the worker's labor that
should understand what obligation is laid upon her. She is not free
from responsibility, for certain conditions which have come to the
surface, that form part of the life of the day, and must be dealt with
in wiser fashion than heretofore, if we are to attain the
"consummation devoutly to be wished."

In the beginning of our history, women were at as high a premium as
they are now in the remote West, but this was a temporary state, and
as more and more, Fortune smiled on the struggling colonies, many
forms of labor were transferred from male to female hands. Limitations
were of the sharpest. That they were often unconscious ones, made them
no less grinding. To "better one's self" was the effort of all. Long
before the Declaration of Independence had formulated the thought
that all men possess certain inalienable rights, amongst which are
"life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," this had become the
faith of those who, braving the perils of the deep, had settled in an
unknown country, that they might enjoy the rights to which they had
been born. The largest liberty for the individual consistent with the
equal liberty of others was demanded and received, nor did it lessen
as time went on. Liberty begat liberty. The ideal was always a growing
one. Less limitation, not more, was the order of each fresh day that
dawned. To every soul born into the colony, to every descendant of
these souls, was a larger hope, a higher ambition. The standard of
living altered steadily even in that portion of the country which
retained longest the old simplicity, and best knew how to combine
"plain living and high thinking," until in course of time the family
remained no longer a colony in itself. Clothing and every necessary,
which was formerly of home manufacture, could now be obtained from
without, and women found outside the family practicable work to do.

The first factory established in New England, early in the present
century, ended the old order or rather was the beginning of the end.
But long before machinery had made the factory a necessity, there had
been the struggle to break the bonds which held all women save the few
who had wealth fast to the household. The same spirit that brought the
pilgrim over the sea stirred in his descendants. The kitchen had
proved itself a prison no less than now, and women and girls flocked
into this new haven and worked with an enthusiasm that nothing could
dampen.

"Oh, those blessed factories!" said to me one day, a woman, herself an
earnest worker for present factory reform, and who began her literary
life as contributor to the Lowell _Offering_. "You people will never
know the emancipation they brought. I loathed the kitchen, and life
went by in one. So many New England kitchens were built with no
outlook, and ours was one. I used to run round the house to see the
sunset over the mountain, and I can hear Aunt Nabby now: 'There goes
that child again! I'd lock her up if she were mine!' We were all
locked up! No chance for more than the commonest education; no money
for any other. And then came these blessed factories! You laugh, but
that was what they seemed then. We earned in them and saved, and in
the end got our education, or gave it to our brothers, who were almost
as shut in. They have altered--yes; but they were deliverance in the
beginning, I can tell you, and in spite of present knowledge, I never
see one of the tall chimneys without remembering and being thankful."

Such has been the story of most of man's inventions. Beginning as
blessing they have in the end shown themselves largely as instruments
of oppression. But in this case it is not the factory; it is the
principle of competition, carried to an extreme, that has brought in
its train child labor and many another perplexing problem. So many
changes for the better are also involved; the general standard of
living is so much higher, that unless brought into direct relation
with workers under the worst conditions, it is impossible to know or
realize the iniquities that walk hand in hand with betterment.

To one who has watched these conditions, the question arises, does the
general advance keep step with the special? Mental and spiritual bonds
are broken for the better class. Does this mean a proportionate
enlightenment for the one below? Has the average worker time or
thought for self-improvement and larger life? Are hours of labor
lessening and possibilities increasing? These questions, and many of
the same order, can have no definite answer from the private inquirer,
whose field of observation is limited, and who can form no trustworthy
estimate till facts from many sources have been set in order, such
order, that safe deductions are possible for every intelligent reader.

It is to Massachusetts that we owe the first formal, trustworthy
examination into the status of the working-woman, and the remarkable
reports of that Bureau of Labor, under the management of Mr. C. D.
Wright, have been the model for all later work in the same direction.
As the result of a steadily growing interest in the subject, we have
now under the same admirable management, the first authoritative
statement of conditions as a whole. The fourth annual report of the
United States Bureau of Labor, entitled, "Working-women in Large
Cities," gives us the result of some three years' diligent work in
collecting information as to every phase of the working-woman's life,
from the trade itself, with its possibilities and abuses, to the
personal characteristics of the woman who had chosen it. It is not
only the student of social science who needs to study the volume, but
the working-women themselves will find here the answer to many
questions, and to some of the charges now and then brought against
them as a class.

The value of figures like these is seldom at once apparent, since many
facts seem isolated and irrelevant. But the fact that they have not
been gathered in the interest of a theory but are set down merely as
material for deduction, gives them a value, not always attached to
figures, and will make them serve as the basis of many a practical
reform.

It is women earning a living at manual labor who are meant by
working-women, and thus all professional and semi-professional
occupations, such as teaching, stenography, typewriting, and
telegraphy, with the thousands who are employed in them, are excluded
from the report. Outside of these occupations, three hundred and
forty-three distinct industries have been investigated. Twenty-two
cities have given in returns, all representative as to locality, and
ending with San Francisco and San Jose for the Pacific slope. Personal
interviews were had by the government agents, with 17,427 women, this
being, according to the estimate of the report, from six to seven per
cent. of the whole number of women engaged in the class of work coming
under observation. I am convinced that this estimate of the United
States report is very misleading. The 17,427 women being six per cent.
of all those engaged in the three hundred and forty-two industries
investigated, the total so employed in the twenty-two cities would be
290,450, which on the face of it appears to be absurd. The New York
Commissioner of Labor, in the report of his Bureau for 1885, estimates
that there were, in 1884, over 200,000 women employed in the various
trades in the city of New York alone. Neither of these reports
includes women employed in rougher manual labor, such as scrubbing,
washing, and domestic service. If the New York Commissioner's estimate
for New York City is correct, and I confess it seems to me to be
nearly so, and if Mr. Wright's estimate is as much too low in all the
other cities as it seems to be in New York, the actual number employed
in trades in the twenty-two cities instead of being only 295,450,
cannot be far from 1,200,000. With the exception of certain statistics
on prostitution, the entire work of the United States report has been
done by women appointed by the Bureau, and Mr. Wright bears cordial
testimony to the efficiency of each one in a most difficult and
laborious task, adding: "They have stood on an equality in all
respects with the male force of the Department, and have been
compensated equally with them. It was considered entirely appropriate
in an investigation of this kind, that the main facts should be
collected by women. The wisdom of this course has been thoroughly
established."

Here, then, for the first time since labor questions began to attract
the attention of students of social science, is an aid to stating
definitely certain facts hitherto unknown to the public at large, and
only surmised by those interested in the subject. Save for the
Massachusetts reports already mentioned, and the valuable one of the
New York Commissioner, Mr. Charles H. Peck, for 1885, with that of the
first report of the Colorado Bureau of Labor Statistics, for 1887 and
1888, prepared under the very competent and careful supervision of Mr.
E. J. Driscoll, there has been no authoritative word as to numbers
employed, ages, conditions, average and comparative earnings, hours of
labor, nationalities, and the many points most difficult to
determine.[13] Few but students, however, are likely to read these
volumes, and thus a resume of their chief points might find place here
were I not limited as to space. Having in mind the injunction of the
editor of THE ARENA, to be brief, I shall quote only from the United
States report. As all three of the Commissioners named agree in the
most important details, except as to numbers employed, the United
States report will speak for them all.

[13] The Report of the California Bureau of Labor, 1887-8,
Commissioner John J. Tobin, should be included, but
came after the above had gone to press.

In the twenty-two cities investigated by the agents of the United
States Bureau, the average age at which girls begin work is found to
be fifteen years and four months. Charleston, S. C., gives the highest
average, it being there eighteen years and seven months, and Newark
the lowest, fourteen years and seven months. The average period during
which all had been engaged in their present occupations, is shown to
be four years and nine months, while of the total number interviewed
9,540 were engaged in their first attempt to earn a living.

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