The Education of American Girls

by Anna C. Brackett

The results of our experiments in co-education have so far indicated that there is no difference between the intellectual tastes of men and women. This I do not accept as final. The prevailing sentiment in society, that girls cannot do all that boys do, and that they are a little in discredit because they cannot, has given them an undue stimulus to prove their power by experiment; and it is well that they have done it, to silence the doubts. Moreover, the women who were looking forward to the higher places of intellectual industry occupied by men, had to test themselves by the standards established for their rivals. And the same may be said of all the money-getting pursuits for women, outside of the lines of domestic service and sewing; in order to get any ground, they have had to fall into men's ways, so that their work could be tested by men's standards. To prove that they were the equals of men, they have had to prove that they were the equals of both women and men; they have had to learn and to be all that other women know and are, and, in addition, to equal men in the points where men surpass women; while their masculine rivals are exempt from all the demands for time and thought bestowed upon the specialties of women.

When women can gain authority for their own standards—the right to work in a woman's way, tested only by the quantity and quality of their results, that is, by the value of their work to society—money-earning women will not break down in health any more than money-earning men do, nor will the total of their work appear smaller than the total of men's work. There is no intrinsic reason why women's work, done in women's way, should have less commercial value and creditable recognition than men's work, done in men's way. Poems are in as good repute and sell as well as books of philosophy, and house decorators are as much in demand, and are paid as well as architects. The present industries of women are undeveloped; there is among them, as yet, no sphere for skilled, high-class work, and many of the industries that naturally belong to women have been developed by men, and are possessed by men. The wages of women are low, because there are too many workers for the range of work they are attempting to do.

The industries that are exclusively in their hands are almost wholly at a stage where intelligent labor is not required, and so few of the industries that have been developed by men are open to them, that, owing to the great competition, even the skilled work of women, as yet, commands but a low price. They want more work, and especially a larger amount of intelligent or skilled work. They must both organize and develop, by the application of the division of labor principle, the work they already have, and they must win from men a part of their work.

But they can make their way into the industries occupied by men, only by doing the work in men's way, and underbidding men in wages. When they once get undisputed possession, they can and do apply their own methods. Mr. Mundella's Bill, to which I have already referred, will, as is believed, if it become a law, put a great obstacle in the way of their progress. It is to the interest of the mill-owners to keep their machinery at work as many hours as they can, and if men will work ten hours a day, while women are prohibited from working more than nine and a half, men will be employed in preference to women, even with the disadvantage of larger wages. But, fortunately, it is said, the women cannot be wholly driven out. In some branches of the work they do so much better than the men, that even if this reduction of hours should be enforced, the mill-owners will still find it to their advantage to employ women.

The women in these special lines have already proved the value of women's work done in women's way. I believe women have also got a similar recognition in some branches of the watchmaking trade; and in teaching, they have already proved the superiority of their methods. They get forward slowly, because of the great strain required in using men's methods to get the gates opened to them, and Mr. Mundella's Bill would put an extra bar across the gates. The wages are kept low along the line of their advance, because an army of laborers follow along so fast in the rear. I have no fear but that women will stand a fair chance with men in the industries of the world, when they once get a free and open way into them, and learn to apply scientific principles as men do. Fine manipulation in a hand is fast coming to be as valuable a quality as strength.

To secure the changes that all wise or good feeling must desire for women, many things are needed; and as I have said, first of all, we need organization in domestic work, in order to reduce the quantity, to save waste in materials, and to develop a better quality of work, by making the different departments into trades or skilled industries—thus we must put our cooking under the care of chemists and physiologists, and in a variety of ways provide work for wives and daughters suited to their intelligence, and relieved of coarse drudgery. We need women physicians, employed by the year, whose duty and interest it will be to keep the family in health, and thus avoid the occasions for curing them when they are ill; and here is the safeguard for our girls—a person familiar with both the home life and school life of the children, and whose interest would forbid her to yield either to the weak affection of the mother, or the thoughtless ambition of the teacher. The familiar conversations that would naturally spring up between competent women physicians on the one side, and mothers, children, and cooks on the other, would contribute vastly to the improved diet and general sanitary habits of the family; and open a way to more rapid progress in determining the relation between different varieties of food and peculiarities in the mental and physical powers and appetites. We need creditable wages, given in employments for women other than teaching, in order to save our schools from being the receptacle of all women who have occasion to earn money. We need some half-time system in our schools, to provide for the pupils who have less health or less time; and also to secure for them teachers from a higher class of families, who find all-day work uncomfortably exhausting or confining. We need to raise the scale of feminine wages, in order to invite the application of time-saving inventions in women's work, as they are now employed in men's work. We need a wider range of work for women.

As a means to all this we need, and as the result of all of it we shall get, a recognition of feminine methods and standards, as well as of masculine methods and standards. If the specialties in the culture of women are worth preserving, it is because they have value; many of them, I am certain, have real value, and others have a current value, so that we cannot at present dispense with them—if they have value, when we have a free and well-adjusted labor market, they will command their price. For bringing about these changes, we must have well-educated, wise women.

Our women, in matters of dress, are more completely the slaves of fashion than the women in any other civilized country. This is due to the necessity they feel for making a good personal impression. Their family position does comparatively little, either for or against them. They marry, or get forward in life, chiefly by making themselves personally agreeable. When we give them other means of influence than this, when we secure to them industrial and political power, these personal considerations will diminish in importance, and their minds will naturally turn away from them.

There are many things awry, many things that need to be improved, but we must be wise in our methods.

We cannot exactly imitate the English, nor do I believe it is worth doing. The Malthusian chorus of political economists suggests the notion that a nation may be over-physical. We want health for ourselves, and healthy tendencies for our descendants. Beyond this, we want to send our surplus force to the brain.