The Century of the Child

by Ellen Key

From all points of view, an eight-hour working day should be the highest limit for woman's work. There are more reasons for it in her case than for man's work. The eight-hour day means not only for the woman as for the man the possibility of enjoying her life in permanent health; it secures time for improving recreation. For the married woman it is an indispensable requirement. Without it her home cannot be kept in order and comfort, her children cannot be physically cared for; without it she is not able to co-operate in their education. The normal working day is, therefore, more necessary for the woman than for the man, because on her, rather than on him, comes the burden of household work. The dangers of night work, as of work in mines, are from the standpoint of health and morality so plain, that no further reason need be urged to defend protective legislation in this case.

But not only the theoretical principles of women's rights are urged against this legislation. Socialists as well as the advocates of women's rights are responsible for different objections of a more solid character. It is urged that legislation will increase the number of unemployed women who, in order to live, will be forced into prostitution, but it is forgotten that the same result comes from low wages in many occupations, and that these low wages are caused by an over-supply of working women. It is said, also, that if protective legislation hinders or prevents women from working, they will not be able to care for their children and the children will be employed in the factory in their stead. The way out of the last difficulty is absolutely plain: the complete prohibition of all work by children under fifteen years of age.

It is urged also that if women are hindered by legislation from fulfilling the demands of their occupation, the result will be, not that they are protected in their occupation, but that the occupation is protected against them. The remedy in this case is certainly difficult, but not impossible to find. Let only the tenth part of the energy now used in agitation for the free right of women to labour be employed in preparing women for such labour as they are suited to undertake. But even when this cannot be done protective legislation carries with it its own corrective. It is always urged that the occupation will be destroyed by protective legislation. Then new methods and new machines will be invented to replace cheap labour power. Those who are protected often themselves complain that they suffer economically under protective legislation, but a long experience will show them how, through the reciprocal effects of all factors in production, the temporary failures will be balanced. A potent remedy for this effect of protective legislation may be looked for in the assertion, found in the programmes of all labour parties, of the right of the unemployed to have work, and a fixed minimum wage. These demands along with that for a normal working day, in which is included rest at night and rest on Sunday, and other measures for the protection of workingmen against accident and old age, are the chief methods by which the labour question, both for men and women, will be solved. Until these aims are realised Ruskin's judgment on modern industrialism which kills the real humanity in man holds good both for men and for women. We make, he says, everything except real men; we bleach cotton; we harden and improve steel; we refine sugar; we make porcelain and print books; but to refine a single living soul, to reform it, to improve it never enters into our reckoning of profit.

The women of the working classes must continue to endure the suffering, to bear the dangers, to subject themselves to the forces which solidarity in this great struggle implies. Only under these conditions can men as well as women elevate themselves, partly by their own combination, partly by the extension of the principle, more and more coming to be recognised, that society, through its legislation, can determine the conditions under which its members work. So will be produced conditions of life and of work worthy of mankind,—a healthier, stronger, and more beautiful race. In this ever continuing progress every part is related to every other part.

Unorganised, ordinary and therefore badly paid work, done by woman, diminishes the wages of man and his opportunity of work. Work in a factory unfits the woman for the conduct of the household, for her duties as a mother. In the turmoil, heat, and rush of the factory her nerves are destroyed and with them her finer emotions. The woman loses not only the right hand, but also the right heart for family life. Badly conditioned women make marriage more difficult for the man; through celibacy, his mortality is increased. Low wages, or times of lack of employment, cause bad dwellings, bad clothes, and bad nourishment. The tortured or ill-conditioned woman is not able to prepare anything good with the small amount of money which the man may earn. From all of this come intemperance and disease. Through these causes, combined with those already noted, the population of factory districts degenerates, in republican Switzerland, not less than in absolutistic Russia.

It is true that such limitations of work in many cases are felt, as well by the single woman as by the family. The restriction of child labour may bring immediate discomfort. But all this is a passing evil. It can be corrected, as soon as it is clearly seen in what direction the advance along all the line is being made. This kind of progress moves in zigzag fashion. What decides whether temporary limitation of freedom makes for progress or not is whether one finds, in turning from the individual, or small groups, to the great whole, that the last is gaining, that in the future, freedom and happiness for all will be increased by this temporary limitation of freedom.

In other relations of life it is a just law that he who goes into a game must abide by its rules. But this rule cannot be applied to that very cruel game which we call life. We do not go into it of our own will. Children have the right not to be obliged to suffer for the mistakes and errors of their parents. How this suffering can be best avoided in case of an inharmonious marriage must be decided by the different individuals, as a question belonging to them alone. As I have already shown, change of custom in relation to the time, age, and motives for marriage is the surest protection for the children, a protection that will gradually be extended. Under a serious conviction of woman's duty as a member of her sex, it will be regarded as a crime for a young wife voluntarily to ill-treat her person, either by excessive study, or excessive attention to sports, by tight-lacing, or consumption of sweets, by smoking or the use of stimulants, by sitting up at night, excessive work, or by all the thousand other ways by which these attractive simpletons sin against nature, until nature finally loses all patience with them.

It must be demanded of the laws of society that they hinder involuntary crimes of unprotected women against their feminine nature.

This is the great work of woman's emancipation; everything else compared with it is non-essential. Through their failure to see this the present representatives of women's rights are working against progress, though they themselves apply the word reactionary to all who assert that the only way by which the woman question as a whole can be solved is through the social revolution. In this revolution protective legislation is an important factor.

According to my method of thinking, and that of many others, not woman but the mother is the most precious possession of the nation, so precious that society advances its own highest well-being when it protects the functions of the mother. These functions are not limited to birth nor to the nourishment of the child; but they go on during the whole time of its training. I believe that in the new society where all women and men alike will be compelled to work (not children, not invalids, and not the aged) people will regard the maternal function as so important for the whole social order, that every mother under fixed conditions, subject to certain control, during a certain period, and for a certain number of children, will obtain from society an allowance for education. She will receive this during the time in which her children require all her care, while she herself is freed from work outside the home. Naturally this does not exclude the case of mothers who from one or another reason cannot devote themselves to the care and training of their children; they can by their own productive work secure a substitute. But for the majority of women, the proposal made above would undoubtedly be the real solution of many problems which now seem insoluble. I do not believe that social development will maintain the old ideal of the father as the one who takes care of the family. I hope, rather, that the new conception of having every individual look after himself will gain more ground. The father will then be, in the real sense of the word, the educator, when the care for the maintenance of the family does not press him down to the ground. A woman will then, as mother of the family, not be in dependence on the man,—a position she feels as humiliating, if as a girl she earned her own living. People are bound to return to this new form of matriarchy, when they begin to consider care of the new generation, as the great business the mother takes over for society. During its progress society must guarantee her existence. In many cases, the answer of the married woman who works outside the home would be as follows: That her happiness would consist in quietly looking after her children, and in being able to keep house, but that she must have an income that would make her independent of her husband. A Swedish evening paper, the special organ of the feminist movement, two years ago started an investigation on the productive work of married women. The answers, contrary to the expectations of the paper, were nearly unanimous in showing what dangers for children, and what interference with household comfort, were caused by the woman working outside the home. An impartial investigation of the causes of the increasing brutality of the young would show certainly that the rapid increase in crime in several countries among the young is caused partly by their prematurely taking up productive work, and partly by early lack of home life, the result of the mother working outside the home.