Human Work

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

That an increasing social consciousness and social activity is the most healthful and happy growth for the human race; and further, that “the riddle of human life” is made quite simple by this purely natural and evolutionary position.

In proof and illustration let us consider certain facts, most of them commonly known to us all, but not commonly considered in this connection. We will observe in turn the organic nature of Society as shown in its nutritive processes, in its high and personally sacrificial specialisations, and in its patently collective mental life.

First, and most visible, come the physical life processes; those daily activities in which our energies find expression, by the products of which our lives are maintained. Among facts suitable for nursery education is the glaring one that in plainest economic relation “no man liveth to himself nor dieth to himself.”

Each man does not support himself by his own efforts, as an individual animal does, but pools his efforts with those of others and shares in the common good as a collective animal does; as the bee or ant. This does not refer to any consciously advocated plan of collectivism; but to the present fact that our coffee comes from one country and our tea from another; that the Californian gives us oranges and the Kansan beef; that the carpenter and mason build our houses and the tailor makes our coats.

The daily necessities of one man are met by the activities of countless other men. If they were gone, the one man could not supply himself with any of these things; but would, if he lived, sink to the level of the savage hunter,—who is indeed “self-supporting.” We have, it is true, a system of exchange in which it is endeavoured to make each man’s share in the common product proportionate to his personal efforts; but even if this system worked successfully it would not alter the fact that the supplies are really made by the others—and the one—alone—could not make them.

Lay aside for the moment the confusion of idea naturally arising from our system of interpersonal exchange and its convenient medium, money.

Suppose that money were entirely out of the world; or that we were so flooded with it that it lost its value as a medium of exchange. Great confusion as to how much of anything should be demanded for something else would of course ensue; but the most conspicuous result would be the unavoidable perception that it was the thing we needed to live on—not the money.

The purchasing power of money varies continually, but the nourishing power of wheat or the heat-retaining power of wool does not vary. We eat the bread and are kept warm by the coat; and the wheat and wool are prepared for us by many strangers. It may be for a moment supposed that an individual man could, if he chose, make his own bread and coat from his own wheat and wool, but follow back the evolution of these processes and see if he ever did.

The more nearly alone you find a man—as the Bushmen—the more nearly naked he is, the more absolutely a hunter and an eater of raw food. To raise wheat and bake bread requires a stationary group of long standing. It is a social process. So with the coat—the man who lives really alone wears at most the skin of another animal.

To keep sheep, to shear, and card, and spin, and weave, and cut, and sew—all these processes require a stationary group of still longer standing; they are social processes. A man alone can catch another animal, can “eat his fat and wear his hair”; but the baker and the tailor are slowly evolved social functionaries. Everywhere we see the present proof that the wants of man are not supplied by his own efforts and cannot be; that his life processes are essentially collective.