But she dies hard, and has generally compassed her purpose long since. It may be confined to rising from “notions” to “imported models” in a single shop; or it may be running the gamut from office girl to head manager of an important business. No matter how ambitious her aspiration, or the seeming impossibility of it, the American girl is very apt to get what she wants in the end. She has the three great assets for success: pluck, self-confidence, and keen wits; and they carry her often far beyond her most daring dreams of attainment.
My friend, Cynthia Brand, is an example. She came to New York when she was twenty-two, with thirty dollars and an Idea. The idea was to design clothes for young girls between the ages of twelve and twenty; clothes that should be at once simple and distinguished, and many miles removed from the rigid commonplaceness of the “Misses’ Department.” All very well, but where was the shop, the capital, the clientèle? In the tip of Cynthia’s pencil.
She had two or three dozen sketches and one good tailored frock. Every American woman who is successful begins with a good tailored frock. Cynthia put hers on, took her sketches under her arm, and went to the best dressmaking establishment in New York. That is another characteristic of American self-appreciation: they always go straight to the best. The haughty forewoman was bored at first, but when she had languidly inspected a few of Cynthia’s sketches she was roused to interest if not enthusiasm. Two days later, Cynthia took her position as “designer for jeunne filles” at L——’s, at a salary which even for New York was considerable.
Hence the capital. The clientèle developed inevitably, and was soon excuse in itself for the girl to start a place of her own. At the end of her third year in New York, she saw her dream of independence realized in a chic little shop marked Brand; at the end of her fifth the shop had evolved into an establishment of three stories. And ten years after the girl with her thirty dollars arrived at an East Side boarding-house, she put up a sky-scraper—at any rate an eleven-story building—of her own; while the hall bedroom at the boarding-house is become a beautiful apartment on Central Park West. And meanwhile someone made the discovery that Cynthia Brand was one of the Brands of Richmond, and Society took her up. Today she is a personage, as well as one of the keenest business women, in New York.
Marvellous, but a unique experience, you say. Unique only in degree of success, not in the fact itself. There are hundreds, even thousands, of Cynthia Brands plying their prosperous trades in the American commercial capital. As photographers, decorators, restaurant and tea-room proprietors, jewellers, florists, and specialists of every kind, these enterprising women are calmly proving that the home is by no means their only sphere; that in the realm of economics at least they are the equals both in energy and intelligence of their comrade man.
It is interesting to contrast this strongly feminist attitude of the American woman with the suffragism of her militant British sister. No two methods of obtaining the same result could be more different. Years ago the American woman emancipated herself, without ostentation or outcry, by quietly taking her place in the commonwealth as a bread-winner. Voluntarily she stepped down from the pedestal (to which, however, her sentimental confrère promptly re-raised her), and set about claiming her share in the business of life. To disregard her now would be futile. She is too important; she has made herself too vital a factor in economic activity to be disregarded when it comes to civic matters.
And so, while Englishwomen less progressive in the true sense of the word have been window-smashing and setting fires, the “rights” they so ardently desire have been tranquilly and naturally acquired by their shrewder American cousins. Fifteen of the forty-odd States now have universal suffrage; almost every State has suffrage in some form. And it will be a very short time—perhaps ten years, perhaps fifteen—until all of the great continent will come under the equal rule of men and women alike.
I had the interesting privilege of witnessing the mammoth Suffrage Parade in New York, just before the presidential election last fall. In more than one way, it was a revelation. After the jeering, hooting mob at the demonstrations in Hyde Park, this absorbed, respectful crowd that lined both sides of Fifth Avenue was even more impressive than the procession of women itself. But seeing the latter as they marched past twenty thousand strong gave the key to the enthusiasm of the crowd. A fresh-faced, well-dressed, composed company of women; women of all ages—college girls, young matrons, middle-aged mothers with their daughters, elderly ladies and even dowagers, white-haired and hearty, made up the inspiring throng. They greeted the cheers of the spectators smilingly, yet with dignity; their own cheers no less ardent for being orderly and restrained; and about their whole bearing was a sanity and good sense, joined to a thoroughly feminine wish to please, which gave away the secret of their popularity.
It was the American woman at her best, which means the American woman with a steady, splendid purpose which she intends to accomplish, and in which she enlists not only the support but the sympathy of her fellow-men. With her own unique cleverness she goes about it. President-elect Wilson stole into Washington the day before his inauguration, almost unnoticed, because everyone was off to welcome “General” Rosalie Jones and her company of petitioners: instead of kidnapping the President (as her English sisters would have planned), the astute young woman kidnapped the people; winning them entirely by her sturdy good humour and daring combined, and refusing to part with a jot of her femininity in the process.
If I have seemed to contradict myself in this brief analysis of so complex and interesting a character as the American woman, I can only go back to my first statement that she herself is a contradiction—only definite within her individual type. The type of the mere woman of pleasure, which implies the woman of wealth, I confess to finding the extreme of vapidity and selfishness, as Americans are always the extreme of something. This is the type the foreigner knows by heart, and despises. But the American woman of intelligence, the woman of clear vision, fine aim, and splendid accomplishment, he does not know; for she is at home, earning her living.