The Business of Being a Woman

by Ida M. Tarbell

True, for a woman there is nothing more painful than putting herself face to face with the suffering of children. Yet for many years now we have had in this country a large and increasing number who were going through the daily pain of grappling with every phase of the distressing problems which come from the poverty, friendlessness, and overwork of the young. Out of their heartbreaking scrutinies there have come certain determinations which are being adopted rapidly wherever the social sense is aroused. We may roughly sum up these conclusions or determinations to be these:—

It is not necessary or endurable that children grow up starved and overworked, that boys and girls be submitted to vicious surroundings, that talent be crushed, that young men and young women be devoured by crime and greed. Youth, its nurturing and developing, has become the passion of the day. This is the meaning of our bureaus of Child Labor, of our Children's Courts, our Houses of Correction, our Fresh-Air Funds and Vacation Homes, our laws regulating hours and conditions, our Social Settlements.

At its very best, however, legislation, organization, work in groups, only indirectly reach the base of the trouble. These homeless babes and children, these neglected boys and girls, these reckless shop and factory girls, are generally the pain and menace that they are because they have not had, as individuals, that guidance and affection of women to which each has a natural right. No collective work, however good it may be, can protect or guide these children properly. Rightfully they should be the charge of that body of women who are unhampered, "free." These women have more, or less, intelligence, time, and means. They owe society a return for their freedom, their means, and their education. Nature has made them the guardians of childhood. Can they decently shirk the obligation any more than a man can decently shirk his duty as a citizen? Indeed, the case of the woman unresponsive to her duty toward youth is parallel to that of the man unresponsive to his duty toward public affairs. One is as profitless and parasitical as the other.

The man who has no notion of what is doing politically in his own ward, who does not sense the malign influences which may be working in his neighborhood, in his very street, perhaps in the next house, who has not his eye on the unscrupulous small politician who leads the ward by the nose, who knows nothing of the records of the local candidates, never goes to the primaries,—this man is one of the most dangerous citizens we have. It is he who makes the machine possible. If he did his work, the governmental machine, which starts there with him, would be sound. It would be begun by honest men interested in serving the country to the best of their ability, and on such a foundation no future solidarity of corruption would be possible.

The individual woman's obligation toward the children and young people in her neighborhood is very like this obligation of the man to public affairs. It is for her to know the conditions under which the children, the boys and girls, young men and maids, in her vicinity are actually living. It is for her to be alert to their health, amusements, and general education. It is for her to find the one—and there always is one—that actually needs her. It is for her to correlate her personal discoveries and experiences with the general efforts of the community.

This is no work for an occasional morning. It does not mean sporadic or even regular "neighborhood visiting." It means observation, reflection, and study. It has nothing to do save indirectly with societies, or groups, or laws. It is a personal work, something nobody else can do, and something which, if it is neglected, adds just so much more to the stream of uncared-for youth. How is it to be done? Have you ever watched a woman interested in birds making her observations? She will get up at daylight to catch a note of a new singer. She will study in detail the little family that is making its home on her veranda. From the hour that the birds arrive in the spring until the hour that they leave in the fall she misses nothing of their doings. It is a beautiful and profitable study, and it is a type of what is required of a woman who would fulfill her obligation toward the youth of her neighborhood.

Could we have such study everywhere in country and town, what tragedies and shames we might be spared! A few months ago the whole nation was horrified by a riot in a prosperous small city of the Middle West which ended in the lynching of a young man, a mere boy, who in trying to discharge his duty as a public official had killed a man. Some thirty persons, over half of them boys under twenty years of age, are to-day serving terms of from fifteen to twenty years in the penitentiary for their part in this lynching.

Their terrible work was no insane outbreak. Analyzed, it was a logical consequence of the social and political conditions under which the boys had been brought up. In a pretty, rich, busy town of 30,000 people proud of its churches and its schools, eighty saloons industriously plied their business—and part of their business, as it always is, was to train youths to become their patrons.

What were the women doing in the town? I asked the question of one who knew it. "Why," he said, "they were doing just what women do everywhere, no better, no worse. They had their clubs; I suppose a dozen literary clubs, several sewing clubs, several bridge clubs, and a number of dancing clubs. I think they cared a little more for bridge than for literature, many of them at least. They took little part in civic work, though they had done much for the city library and city hospital. Many girls went to college, to the State Institute, to Vassar and Smith. They came back to teach and to marry. It was just as it is everywhere."

Another to whom I put the same question, answered me in a sympathetic letter full of understanding comment. The mingled devotion, energy, and blindness of the women the letter described, spoke in its every line. They built charming homes, reared healthy, active children whom they educated at any personal sacrifice—all within a circle of eighty saloons! To offset the saloons they built churches—a church for each sect—each more gorgeous than its neighbor. It was in building churches that they showed the "greatest tenacity of purpose." They had a large temperance organization. It supported a rest room and met fortnightly to pray "ardently and sincerely." How little this body of good women sensed their problem, how little they were fitted to deal with it, my informant's comment reveals. "You doubtless remember the story," the letter runs, "of the old lady who deplored the shooting of craps because, though she didn't know what they were, 'life was probably as dear to them as to anybody.'"