Women and economic evolution: or, The effects of industrial changes upon the status of women

by Theresa Schmid McMahon

No matter how few the impediments placed in the way of the ambitious youth entering the field of higher learning, the lack of economic resources naturally deterred all but the most determined from the undertaking. Hence we find the field of higher learning, which is purely cultural, becoming the privilege of the leisure class, free from economic pressure, and able to maintain the ritual and ceremonial observances. “The universities of Paris and Oxford and Cambridge were founded to educate the lord and the priest. And to these schools and their successors, as time went on, fell the duty of training the gentlemen and the clergy.”[61]

The early universities of Germany showed the same spirit. They “did not grow up gradually, like the earlier ones in France and Italy, but were established after a scheme already extant and in operation. The spiritual and temporal power contributed to their foundation. The Pope, by a bull, founded the institution as a teaching establishment, and endowed it with the privilege of bestowing degrees, whereby it became a studium generale or privilegiatum, for according to mediaeval conceptions teaching had its proper source and origin in the church alone.”[62]

While it is extremely difficult to change fossilized habits of thought, newer civilizations send forth fresh shoots adapted to new conditions. Thanks to the development of industry demanding trained minds of a useful bent, we find the newer institutions of learning becoming more practical, and developing the useful arts and sciences.

“Through the movement toward the democracy of studies and constructive individualism, a new ideal is being reached in American universities, that of personal effectiveness. The ideal in England has always been that of personal culture: that of France, the achieving, through competitive examinations, of ready made careers, the satisfaction of what Villari calls ‘Impiegomania,’ the craze for an appointment; that of Germany, thoroughness of knowledge; that of America, the power to deal with men and conditions.”[63]

The new types of schools, characteristically American, have influenced the older type, until we see on all sides a struggle between the leisure class ideals and the practical ideals of democracy; the outcome of this struggle depending in each case upon the degree of control exercised by the financial contributors—the leisure class or the masses.

The degree of democracy in our higher institutions of learning determines the degree of “ritualistic paraphernalia” in vogue. The use of “ritualistic paraphernalia” is an example of the social ideals of a naturally conservative class and is slow to respond to democratic ideals brought about by industrial changes.

The spread of democracy has brought into our schools a new class of savants. They possess all the qualifications of the older savants save their financial independence. Their poverty is not a great calamity to those who remain celibates, but to the head of a family it means a struggle to maintain a standard of living too high for his income.

The home is the last to free itself from the influence of leisure class ideals which permeate higher learning; and the struggle to reconcile the newer ideals with the older ones is almost tragic. The heaviest strain falls upon the wife who struggles to maintain her social status upon which depends the status of the family. A display of clothes is not as essential to the maintenance of this status as an appearance of leisure, and the conveyance of the impression to the outsider that a high standard of comfort and luxury is realized. That the comfort actually exist is not necessary so long as the outsiders are deceived.

Often a great deal of ingenuity is displayed by the housewife in conveying on a very moderate income the impression that the family is living on a high plane. Economy is practiced “in the obscurer elements of consumption that go to physical comfort and maintenance.”

This class of society illustrates most pathetically the ideals of propriety of a non-industrial group. Its reluctance in giving up its exclusiveness, and its persistence in clinging to leisure-class standards is most apparent in the home. Here the life of the housewife is often one of drudgery “especially where the competition for reputability is close and strenuous.”