Human Work

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The world is full of aborted people, aborted by the crushing pressure of these old lies in economics; people crippled in mind, people crippled in body, people swollen and distorted from being oversupplied and underworked; people shrunken and distorted from being overworked and undersupplied. These can be helped at once by those of us who see the wisdom of improving the race without waiting for them to understand and accept the principles on which the change in condition rests. We did not wait for all the citizens of America to believe in the principles involved, before giving them the public school and public library. Many do not, when questioned, even now believe in those principles. But they are not reluctant to avail themselves of the provision made; and the advantageous results of that provision are apparent in our citizens, whether they understand why or not.

There are some most comforting facts, meanwhile, in our social relationship, which enable us to attack the concrete problems of our time with courage and patience. Seeing that our gain is social, and not individual, and that it is rapidly transmissible as far as the brain is open to transmission, we have but to develop the brain of our laggard members to bring them into possession of the whole great field of social advance. The wealth of Society, steadily augmented as it is by the very individuals who need so much more social return than they have ever had, is quite equal to any drain which may be necessary to pay up our arrears of debt to the worker. A conscientious and aroused society, seeing how unjustly neglected have been its most valuable constituents, cannot do too much to bring to them, and to their children, all the social nourishment they can absorb; i. e., to provide the best possible educational environment for the children who need it most.

Here arises a question, based on previous social studies and conclusions. If Society provides generously for its most needy members, will not that injure the world by multiplying the least desirable class? Will it not put a premium on deficiency, instead of efficiency? This idea rests not only on the Want theory and the Ego concept, but on the Malthusian doctrine. It is believed that human beings tend to multiply in a certain ratio; that the advantage to the race lies in the development of better individuals, not in mere numbers; and that better individuals are developed by personal competition, by the “struggle for existence” and “the survival of the fittest.”

As soon as we see the organic unity of Society, this “struggle for existence” idea must change its terms. What we are now concerned with is the development of ever better social organs and functions, and that development does not take place in a direct combat between individuals, but in a superior process supplanting an inferior process, with no essential injury to the constituents.

The introduction of machinery, for instance, was a legitimate social progress. The injury to working men which we allowed to accompany it, was not in any way essential to social progress, but militated against it. Interdependent organs do not fight with one another. Their change in form and value is gradual, and involves no immediate destruction to constituent cells. Society improves by the development of its component parts, not by a destructive conflict of parts. If you are seeking to improve a family of children or a breed of fowls, you do not do it by pitting them against one another and cheerfully retaining the “survivors” as the “most fit.” The egg-laying capacity of the hen, the milk-giving capacity of the cow, is not developed by combat between hens, or between cows (or their respective cocks and bulls)! To this it will be eagerly replied, “Ah, yes, but we do it by selection—by carefully choosing the ones best suited, and breeding from them. They do not survive from natural selection, but from artificial selection. Now if we were free to practice that on Society, if we could choose the best types and breed from them only, then we could indeed improve the race.”

That this is one process of improvement is not denied. But it is not the only, nor by any means the most valuable process in the social organism. The swiftest and broadest medium of social improvement lies in that great common sensorium of ours, the brain. By social contact and example, by social transmission, the more advanced members of Society can lift the less advanced at a rate immeasurably faster than the slow current of heredity. We have all seen this in families of very low-grade people, obtaining sudden access to social advantages by present methods, and changing in mind and body to a marked degree, even in one generation. This gain is of course incorporated in the family through heredity, but the effect of ten years’ access to the social stores of knowledge, culture, and refinement changes an individual to a very great degree. This immense power of education, using the word in its very widest sense, can be turned on to every child of the race, if we so choose, with a speedy result of race improvement which would laugh to scorn the fumbling, wasteful processes of natural selection, and the one-step-better methods of artificial selection. It is by transmission that we raise the social level most rapidly; a free and general transmission of the product of the special worker to the hands and minds of all.

For Society to bestow the same care and provision on all its children that the wisest parent now seeks to bestow on his would develop the race faster than anything conceivable. That this method would at once improve the individual, the race, and the productivity of both, is clear. That it would “pauperise” has been shown to be an erroneous deduction from the Want theory; under which we are indeed all potential, and some actual, paupers. The further claim that it would tend to a too rapid increase of population, especially among the least fit, should be carefully examined.

The Malthusian error is in assuming that a given rate of reproduction is fixed and final. If Malthus had studied the subject more deeply, he would have found that the rate of reproduction varies widely, not only in the “animal kingdom” but the man. This variation is relative to other conditions; and has been thus formulated by Spencer, “Reproduction is in inverse proportion to individuation.” The lower the efficiency of the individual, the more young ones it has.

Progressive specialisation, bringing a higher degree of individual efficiency, carries with it a decrease in the rate of reproduction. The myriad eggs of the fish or insect are followed as species develop by the lesser litters of high-grade quadrupeds, till we reach one at a birth. A fish that only laid one egg at a time would not have a very tall family tree. In man we have the general rule of one at a time; but we have it more times in some cases than in others. The human birth rate varies widely, too; and the action of the same law, a higher development of the individual, higher specialisation, leads to a lower birth rate.

There are also artificial variants, as so painfully shown in the dwindling of France’s population; but quite apart from any morbid processes of stirpiculture lies this broad and beautiful law,—the higher specialisation of the individual tends to reduce the birth rate. This is shown with clearness through all the turbid cross-currents of our mistaken behaviour; the most developed kind of people have the least children, and the least developed kind of people have the most children. Even in folk lore we see it indicated—“there was once a King and a Queen who were perfectly happy, except that they had no children,” and on the other hand, “The poor man hath his quiver full.”