Hand in hand with the expansion of wants must go an increase of the money income of the family unless the cost of production has correspondingly cheapened. If not, the family is living beyond its means. The income of the family must be increased either by increasing the wages of men or by the wives and mothers entering the industrial field. Since to lower one’s standard of consumption is to lose one’s social status, it is considered far better to engage in some reputable employment outside the home, even though it entails continuous toil from morning until night.
The difficulty is not always met in the same way. In one community it may be perfectly proper for a married woman to continue her stenography after marriage while in another it would entail social ostracism. Often small economies are practiced in the home where no one is the wiser.
In France “the sitting-room is apt to be shut up all the week in the interest of the furniture, and only opened on the single afternoon the lady of the house is supposed to be at home to her friends. Then in winter, just before the hour of reception, the meagre wood-fire is set ablaze, and sometimes tea is prepared, along with biscuits far from fresh. You may be thankful—if tea is to be offered you, a rare occurence—should the tea be no staler than the biscuits.”[52]
We need not go to France for illustrations, for even in democratic America expensive table service does not necessarily imply an abundance of food. Where men’s incomes do not compensate for the decreased economic value of women’s work in the home, the problem is as pathetic as the one faced by the aristocracy of Cranford.
“The present relation of incomes to wants may be seen more clearly in the case of single men and women than in that of families. In the life of both sexes there is a lengthening period between the beginning of the working years and the marriage age, where the standards of the individuals are directly made by their income. Whatever they are they are carried into marriage; if the first epoch is one of advance, the second is likely to be also.”[53]
Of Fall River it is said that “the impulse which makes a married woman continue to work in the mill may be far less urgent in the economic sense and simultaneously far more urgent in the social sense.” And further on they tell us, “These Fall River women are women of a fine kind. They are highly skilled for women. They are well paid for women. They are intelligent, attractive, ambitious.”[54]
The woman who still “finds plenty to do at home,” and the woman who has become part of the industrial world represent two types of homes common in the middle class. There is still a third. It is the woman who lives in a modern apartment and can take full advantage of all the industrial changes that minimize her work. Probably Patten has her in mind when he says “Once the household industries gave to the staying-home woman a fair share of the labor, but today they are few, and the ‘home-maker’ suffers under enforced idleness, ungratified longing, and no productive time-killing.... Heredity has not been making idleness good for women while it has been making work good for men. Valuable qualities are developed by toil, and women improve as do men under the discipline of rewards.”[55]
Thus we have the three types of women in the middle class and there is a marked difference in the social attitude toward them. The woman who is busy in her home is looked upon as a vanishing type. The idle woman is viewed doubtfully. She is thought of as enjoying a leisure which she, as a member of the middle class is not entitled to. Her idleness weighs more on the social conscience than the idleness of the woman of wealth. And justly so; for her past stands for many of the better things of our civilization which we cherish as ideals, and to see her become an idler is to witness a growing waste of energy which was previously utilized to the great advantage of society. She is already beginning to ask “What can I do?” lest public sentiment should condemn her for her social parasitism.
It is the middle class woman who goes to work—whether married or single—who is arousing her sex from lethargy that threatens race degeneracy. She is taking her place with the men in trying to solve industrial and social problems. Her home life tends to represent a newer ideal. She often is not only the companion of her husband in the home but in the business world as well; a source of economic strength instead of weakness. What becomes of the children of these families? This question brings up the subject of “race-suicide” which will be discussed in another chapter.