Observe, then, it is not in one or two sections of our community life, but in all sections that diverse causes are producing one uniform result—the break-up of the family home; and behind all the more superficial causes there is working a profound factor of change in the centripetal or constructive and the centrifugal or destructive forces of nature. Whilst the latter destroys old forms, the former prepares for the new form—prepares, not only by an integration of workers, but by a fresh inspiration of love and desire for work. Hence women and men endowed with reason, knowledge and practical skill may bring the life of their own immediate circle into express and positive line with this constructive, profoundly evolutional, movement.
Domestic reform implies the relinquishment of that whole system of household labour that requires the combination of a subject with a parasitic class. Co-operation among equals takes the place of masterful authority and slavish subjection, and heavy labour will be relieved by scientific appliance. Labour-saving contrivances in family homes hardly exist. There has been little spur to invention on these lines. But, as in industrial fields, a saving of money, material and labour by the use of machinery has followed the introduction of organized co-operation, so, doubtlessly, a similar process will follow the gradual adoption of organized co-operation within the home. This is not the solution of the servant problem merely. It has a far wider significance. Many educated women who are now seeking useful work and economic independence outside of home-life will find these within the domestic circle, and further will find that it is possible to combine such necessary conditions of dignified life with fulfilment of duty alike to the aged and to the young.
Pioneers who aim at social solidarity must in practice recognize labour as the indispensable basis of social life and social institutions. All methods of wage-payment dependent on industrial competition will be repudiated for a system that acknowledges every form of useful work as entitling the worker to financial independence; and in the emotional sphere, with its possibilities of inner union and solidarity, who can measure the impetus towards the desired goal that will be given by the setting of the solitary in families and the re-gathering of the old into the bosom of a rich, full, domestic life.
Let us suppose that from fifteen to twenty groups—they may be families or groups of friends—combine and pass out from their numerous separate houses into one large commodious dwelling built for them or bought and adapted to their purpose. The bedrooms are furnished on the continental plan with accommodation for writing, reading, solitary study, or rest by day, and all the latest improvements in lighting, heating and ventilating, etc. By the rules of the house—except for cleaning—no one enters these rooms uninvited by the inmate, who has there at all times, if wished, perfect privacy and the most thorough personal comfort. Two eating apartments are placed contiguous to the kitchens, and by taking advantage of every invention to facilitate cooking and serving, the lady-cooks and attendants may place prepared food on the table and sit down to partake of it with their friends. One wing of the house is set apart for nurseries and nursery training, another for school teaching, inclusive of indoor kindergarten; a music-room well-deafened enables the musical to practise many instruments without jarring the nerves of others; a playroom for the young and a recreation-room set apart for whist and chess, etc., a billiard room, and if desired, a smoking room; a large drawing-room where social enjoyment is carefully promoted every evening, a library or silent room where no interruption to reading is permitted, these, and a few small boudoirs for intercourse with special friends form the chief outer requirements of the ideal collectivist home.
All the details of household management may safely be left to pioneers of the new woman movement; it belongs only to scientific meliorism to point out the general features and structure of the reformed domestic system and to show its vitally important position in relation to any rational scheme of wide-reaching social reform.
Humanity as a whole has to climb upward in the scale of being and to leave behind it the individual or family selfishness allied with animal passions that are purely anti-social; it has further to develop that self-respect that allied with heart-fellowship brings in its train all the social virtues that distinguish the man from the brute. Germs of that self-respecting life are with us even now, but the soil in which they will spring up to vigorous growth must be created, i.e. brought together by man himself. The fitting of character to a new domestic system should not be difficult in the case of children under wise training, for it is as easy to acquire good habits in childhood as bad habits, and the wholesome atmosphere of a well-regulated superior home will powerfully and painlessly aid in shaping the young. But for the grown-up to alter personal habits, and adapt thought and feeling to a new order of every-day life, the task is not easy. It may press heavily on the ordinary adult at the initial stage of the movement. Happily that task may be rendered easier by mutual criticism kindly and gravely exercised. The method was practised for upwards of thirty years in the Oneida Creek Community with a marked success. Criticism, says one of the members, is a boon to those who seek to live a higher life and only a bugbear to those who lack ambition to improve. It was to the community a bond of love and an appeal to all that is noblest, most refined and elevated in human nature; it helped a man out of his selfishness in the easiest, most kindly way possible. Whereas in ordinary life the interference of the busybody, the tongue of the tale-bearer, the shaft of ridicule, the venom of malice, are unavoidable—in the Community such criticizing was almost unknown. It was bad form for anybody to speak complainingly of anyone else, because criticism was the prerogative of the Community, and was instituted to supersede all evil-speaking or back-biting. Nor was it an occasion for direct fault-finding merely. Those criticizing were always glad to dilate on the good qualities of their subject, and to express their love and appreciation of what they saw to commend. (Abel Easton, Member of the Oneida Community.)
Another member, Allan Estlake, thus speaks: “Criticism was a barrier to the approach of unworthy people from without, and equally a bar to the development of evil influences within.” The practice was not original. Mr. Noyes found it established in a select society of missionaries he had joined previous to his forming the Oneida Community.
One of the weekly exercises of this society, he tells us, was a frank criticism of each other’s character for the purpose of improvement. The mode of proceeding was this: At each meeting the member whose turn it was, according to alphabetic order, to submit to criticism, held his peace while the others one by one told him his faults. This exercise sometimes crucified self-complacency, but it was contrary to the rules of society for any one to complain. I found much benefit in submitting to this ordeal both while I was at Andover and afterward.[[12]] If a number of young men adopted criticism as a means of improvement it should not be more difficult to pioneers of the new domestic life, young and old, provided they have the same desire to improve. It might be irksome to the young, until they had learned to profit by it, as all discipline is at first, but when “our young people,” says Mr. Estlake, “had formed habits in harmony with their means of improvement they learned to love the means by which they had progressed and to rejoice in the results of sufferings that were incident only to their inexperience.”[[13]]
[12]. The Oneida Community, Allan Estlake, p. 65.
[13]. The Oneida Community, Allan Estlake, p. 66.