СНАР. XVII Men Have Framework of Law With outer events in the life of the family, the community, the tribe and the state. For the thousands of years his decisions related to little else than war, peace and security, women consented to their Fixed the exclusion. But since man-made law, instead of custom, has fixed in detail the rights and duties of spouses and since the man-made state has come to touch in an intimate way the family, children, education, recreation, industry, public health and public morals, the male monopoly of control of law and of the state is more and more resented by thinking women. MAN HAS MAde ideals for HIMSELF AND FOR WOMAN TOO Among most peoples, the ideals men follow have been worked out by men, but the ideal for women has not been worked out by women. In its chief lines it has been fixed by masculine taste. In Japan, for example, it is as plain as print that the mould into which the daughter's soul is poured is man-made, whereas the mould in which the son's character is shaped is by no means woman-made. The female is to be adorned, modest, self-abnegating, gentle, retiring and domestic because it suits the male to have her so. The world over, presumptuous man has not only formed his own conceptions of what women ought to be and to do, but has even brought about an emotional acceptance of these conceptions by woman herself. The wide divergence in the meaning of "virtue," "honor" and "modesty " as applied to different sexes is a masculine invention. How much it costs the human female to be the creature he requires her to be, how many of her possibilities are sacrificed, and whether she is happy in the rôle he forces on her, are questions which never occur to the self-confident male. As women perceive how man has moulded the character and destiny of their sex to suit his pleasure and comfort, to embody his notions of what woman and the family should be, they become deeply resentful. Since a thing so intangible offers nothing to strike at, they struck so much the harder at man's political domination. The bitterness and exasperation that lay behind the equal suffrage movement, especially in England, came not so much from man's monopoly of the state as from his claim to make woman after his own image. What really was at stake was not the ballot so much as the right of women to form for themselves womanly standards of judgment and character as in Which Women Live Men Have Made Them selves and for Women СНАР. No Place Has Been Society for Woman Wife the pre-condition to their eventual equal cooperation with men in shaping and regulating the life of the family, the community and the state. PROTEST OF THE UNMARRIED SELF-SUPPORTING WOMEN Such place as has been deliberately made in society for woman is a place for the married woman. What with her legal right to be supported by her husband and her conventional right not to labor outside the home, the wife is by no means badly-off. But as for the the adjustment between the sexes has been disturbed in countries of male emigration (England, e.g.) by the growth of a great army of celibate, self-supporting women. Without a realm of their own as the wife has, they set up claims to be admitted to all man's occupations and prerogatives and to influence inter-sex laws and relations, altho having no such relations themselves. The result is strife between marrying and non-marrying women and marked antagonism between the latter class of women and Sex Antagonism Can Be but a Phenome non men. SEX ANTAGONISM UNNATURAL AND TRANSIENT Thus, in spite of the ancient biological adjustment between the sexes, in spite of Nature having had to make the ways and traits Transient of each sex attractive to the other, in spite of the innumerable love affairs between individual men and women, it happens at times that the sexes come into conscious opposition and their members become solidary along sex lines. A tension so unnatural and painful is bound, however, soon to be relieved. It has arisen from loss of belief in the rib story in Genesis, in the legend of Eve and the serpent, in the witchcraft superstition, or in the doctrine that because of menstruation woman is "unclean," or has developed out of a novel situation such as that created by the social functions of the modern state, by the migration of industry from home to factory or by the rise of a numerous class of celibate women. All the serious causes of trouble can be removed by readjustment of the ideals of womanhood, of the division of labor and responsibility between the sexes, of woman's place and prerogatives in the home, in industry, in society, in the A thorough adjustment once effected may continue to give general satisfaction for generations, until new knowledge or a new social situation brings on another period of strain. CHAPTER XVIII CLASS STRUGGLE CHAP. Economic volved in INTER-GROUP struggle may arise out of disagreement as to the best means of attaining a common end, as when political parties wrangle over the question of federalism or unity, of cen- Interests tralization or state rights. It may arise out of contradiction in 4 way of feeling or thinking, as we see in warring schools-ideal- Class ism versus naturalism, mediaevalism versus modernism, romanticism versus realism. But class struggle springs out of interference of economic interests aggravated usually by the fact that one class holds itself higher than the other and assumes to exercise over it some kind of domination which the other resents. WHY CLASS STRUGGLE COMES AND GOES Struggle or Techno Changes Class Another A class struggle is precipitated by an economic or technological Economic change which throws up a new class or threatens to ruin an old logical one. The Roman public land (ager publicus), the spoil of con- Hurl One quest, brought on the struggles with which the Gracchi were identified. Later the saturation of Italy with enslaved war captives called forth the convulsive efforts of the dying small-husbandman class. Cheap access to foreign breadstuffs led, eighty years ago, to the struggle between the landlords of England and the factory lords over the question of the "corn laws." In the closing decade of the last century the appreciation of gold precipitated among us a struggle between debtor and creditor groups which quickly died down when, after 1897, gold began to depreciate. Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin near the end of the eighteenth century caused an immense cotton-planting interest to grow up in our South about African slavery, which antil then seemed to be waning. A low price for agricultural produce resulting from too-rapid bringing of Western public lands under cultivation caused the Middle Western farmers such hardship half a century ago that they locked horns with the nearest group which might be held responsible for their plight, namely СНАР. Some Class Struggle Flares up and Dies Down Not the Under So cial Peace as Under Social the railroads. A heavy inflow of low-standard alien workers brings on a series of struggles by native labor aiming to resist the inevitable economic effects of the immigration. On the other hand, there are economic developments which allay class oppositions. The drive of manufacturers for a high protective tariff weakens when some of them who invade foreign markets with their goods begin to care more for "free" raw materials than for "protection" to their product. The spread of rural cooperation may put an end to the outcry of small farmers lest they be swallowed up by large capitalistic farming. Cooperative stores may end the friction between the public and the retail merchants. With a fuller knowledge of the conditions of factory efficiency intelligent employers drop voluntarily certain exploitive policies which peculiarly exasperate their workers. ALTERNATION OF SOCIAL PEACE WITH SOCIAL STRIFE A class struggle is too exhausting to be let run on forever. As a rule it leads to an adjustment in customs, moral standards, institutions, law, or the constitution of the state. Each gains a part of what it has contended for, so that the opposition between classes dies away or becomes secondary to certain common interests or feelings. Ere long this adjustment is accepted as if it were a part of the order of nature, and later generations can hardly conceive of any other arrangement. Thus there was social peace in England from the abolition of villenage until the beginning of the enclosures. But the hour strikes when some economic or technological change ruptures this concord and class strife breaks out afresh. This in turn may lead to anarchy, alternating revolutions, foreign intervention or domination, or else to a new adjustment ushering in another June of social tranquillity. In the course of a long period of social peace the consciousness of class fades, national or cosmopolitan feeling becomes strong, and society is deemed an outgrowth of natural fellowship and the spirit of cooperation. Morals, law and state are regarded as consistent one-piece creations of conscience or reason. Conversely, a period of sharp conflict establishes the idea that society is not born of good will, but is the arena of contending groups which, however, have more to gain by sticking together than by going asunder. The social order is looked upon as a balance of opposing forces, while laws and institutions are seen as compromises rather than products of logic. TACTICS AND WEAPONS OF CLASS STRUGGLE In order to win the sympathy and support of other elements each class camouflages its self-interest in the struggle by standing for some high-sounding principle or broad social interest. The landed proprietors demand the shutting out of cheap foreigngrown foodstuffs in order that a rugged rural population be preserved as the nation's reservoir of potential military strength. The feudal lords never admit that they covet the fruits of other men's toil, but ever harp upon willingness to die for "throne and altar." Landlords confronted by a tenants' union set themselves up as defenders of the rights of all property-owners. Manufacturers solemnly declare that their sole purpose in seeking high tariff protection is to be able to pay "an American wage." To beat the labor unions employers pose as champions of "industrial freedom," as unselfish upholders of the "open shop" principle that the workman may work where and for whom he pleases and under such conditions as he deems fit. In resisting the demand. for a legal working day they profess disinterested solicitude for the freedom of the wage earner to contract for such length of day as may seem good to him. Workingmen pressing for the exclusion of Oriental low-wage labor assume the noble role of protectors of Christian civilization against the heathen. The wealthy resist progressive taxation, not frankly because it would flatten their purses, but on the ground that it would "penalize industry and thrift." Every threatened privileged class exploits the occasional breaches of the peace which invariably accompany popular movements in order to strike the fetching pose of chamFion of law and order." Each class arouses the class consciousness and kindles the fighting spirit of its members by shrieking that its very existence is at stake, or by circulating shameless lies relative to what members of the opposing class have said, or attempted, or done. If possible, it makes an economic thrust at its opponent. Landlords evict tenants who will not pay the higher rental demanded. Tenants reply by agreement not to pay the higher rental and to rent no premises from which a tenant has been evicted. Workmen strike; employers lockout or blacklist. Farmers build СНАР. Each Class Under the the Marches Banner of General Interest '' Economic in Use |