Vesper Talks to Girls

by Laura A. Knott

There is wide disagreement as to the answer to the question why so many women are engaged in gainful employments. You can best work out the problem for yourself by recalling the women and girls of your acquaintance who are earning a livelihood by work outside of the home. Ask one of these why she does not give up her present position and go back to the “shelter of the home.” She will probably tell you that there is in her home no possible means of support for her. The chances are that she will tell you that her labor is one of the sources of income for the maintenance of that home and dependent ones in it.

The talk of some people would lead you to think that if women would only behave themselves they might all spend their lives in weaving and spinning, as their great-grandmothers did. But if they did this there would be no market for their labors; and who would earn the money necessary for their support? If you knew the facts in regard to the average home of one hundred years ago, you would find conditions vastly different from what they are now. Then, the great bulk of the population lived on farms, from which the labor of all drew sustenance for all. For many years the trend of population has been toward the cities, and the man who once made a comfortable living from the farm, with the assistance of his family, now works in a store or a factory or some other industrial concern. The compensation is often not enough for the family necessities, and the labor of women must be added to that of men. Formerly there were few men who did not have several dependent women relatives in addition to wife and daughters. Now a self-respecting woman prefers the independence which comes with self-support.

Moreover, a great deal of the most interesting work has been forced out of the home. Labor-saving inventions have multiplied and every year brings new ones. Thus have the forces of water and air and electricity conspired to take away much of the ancient prerogative of woman. Your great-grandmother, in all probability, made all the clothing for her family, men included. Moreover, she and her assistants wove the cloth and her hands spun the wool out of which it was made. The linen and the wool must still be woven and made into cloth, but it must be done outside of the home. One would almost have to be wealthy now in order to wear garments toward which no machine had made any contribution. The Ruskin weaving industries of England are an example of the handwork of the twentieth century, but the textiles made on those looms are costly.

In your great-grandmother’s home were manufactured all the lights needed, the wax or tallow candles. We now demand gas and electricity. Then all the food consumed in the home was prepared there. Now vast canneries and factories do the work at less cost than it can be done in the home. Ready-made clothing can often be bought as cheaply as the materials alone for home manufacture.

What I wish to show is that the transference of the labor of the home to the factory has robbed many women of useful, satisfying labor. This has produced widespread unrest among them. The protest against inactivity has caused an increasing army of women to knock upon the door of every opportunity for productive, satisfying occupation.

It is not a wrong instinct in women which urges them, when not needed in the home, to find activity outside of it. If you have a craving to do something in the world, don’t be ashamed of it. It may not be best for you to do it, but the wish to do it does not prove that you are unwomanly, even if it is something that has oftenest been done by men. I am always glad when I find a girl seriously taking up some line of work by means of which she may, if necessary, gain a livelihood. Is it wise for parents to bring their daughters up without any definite aim, instilling into their minds the idea that they will always be taken care of and protected? Who is protected, who can be protected, when fortunes are heaped up to-day only to be swept away to-morrow?

In the progress of women, it is the question of their enfranchisement which is particularly agitating the world to-day, just as, yesterday, it was the question of their education. We have no right not to be interested in the matter. The statement may fearlessly be made that there is not an American young woman alive to-day upon whom will not fall, if she lives to a reasonable age, the responsibility of the ballot. You may believe in woman suffrage or you may not, yet, with your consent or without it, there will some time be placed in your hands an instrument for the possession of which men struggled and fought for hundreds of years, and for which many of them died; and for which women have struggled since long before you were born, and for which many of them would have been willing to die. The danger is that when woman suffrage shall have become universal, and we are no longer reminded, as we now constantly are, of the cost and the value of the ballot, we shall cease to prize it, and shall grow careless of its use, as many men also have done. That is the way of the world. What one generation purchases at tremendous cost, the next accepts as a matter of course. A distinguished woman, who, though she labored hard to help secure higher educational privileges for women, was born a little too soon to avail herself of them, gave an illustration of this. Her granddaughter, just home on her first vacation from college, said to her, “Grandmother, I wonder that you did not go to college. It is splendid!” How little that girl knew of the long, uphill struggle that had taken place in order that she might receive a college education!

Why are women asking for an opportunity to vote? Whatever arguments may be adduced in favor of woman suffrage, we always come back to equality as a first principle, the primary right of each individual to claim before the law the same right as every other individual. It is not entirely a question of the wise use of suffrage, it is a question of liberty and equality. As the world has become more enlightened, liberty has more and more become its governing principle, and the progress cannot stop until every adult fitted for citizenship in any civilized state shall be enfranchised.

Here are several reasons why, it seems to me, women should have the ballot.

First, in order that they may feed and clothe their families properly and provide healthful homes for them to live in. The preparation of food used to be solely women’s business, but it is not now, as I have said. Upon proper inspection of dairies, bakeries, canneries, etc., every family depends for its well-being. Adulteration of food and misbranding need to be guarded against. We all know something of the struggle that has been waged for years by the Consumers’ League and other beneficent agencies against the sweat-shop system. Poisonous germs may lurk in a garment made under unwholesome conditions. A polluted water-supply or a defective sewage system may bring disease or death into any home. The ballot is not the only weapon which can be employed against these evils that menace the home, but it is probably the most effective one.