The duties of the wife of the college professor are manifold. The work of ministering to the fundamental needs of the family is left to a servant, or if it is impossible to keep hired help, it is done with as much secrecy as possible, in order to avoid the stigma of commonness. Where she assumes all the household tasks, the strain upon her is a severe one. The mechanical conveniences are not applied to her work with the same degree of speed with which newer patterns in rugs and other furniture make their appearance in the household. The list of articles essential to the maintenance of an appropriate standard of living is a long one, and many of them have no other charm than the expensiveness which proclaims pecuniary strength.
It must not be inferred that the position of the housewife is a subordinate one. Her authority is paramount in the home which her ingenuity has planned and so skillfully manipulates. Her social prestige is as far above her financial means as the standard of living she attempts to maintain is above her husband’s salary. This social prestige rests upon a deference paid to the higher learning her husband is accredited with by virtue of his position. Her intellectual attainments may be very mediocre but that is a matter of indifference as long as she possesses a knowledge of the arts of polite society. Indeed, the superficial acquirements of a ladies’ seminary are of a greater assistance to her in performing her social functions than a mastery of the sciences.
The difficulty encountered in attempting to maintain the old aristocratic ideals is having two effects: There is a greater tendency for college men not to marry, or to marry late in life—after securing an economic foothold; and secondly, to add to incomes by directing a part of their energy along lines offering greater economic returns, such as the writing of books to satisfy a popular demand not of a purely scholastic nature, or of having interests belonging entirely to the business world. Veblen says, “Those heads of institutions are best accepted who combine the sacerdotal office with a degree of pecuniary efficiency. There is a similar but less pronounced tendency to intrust the work of instruction in the higher learning to men of some pecuniary qualification.”[64]
The business ventures of college men afford a pecuniary return compatible with scholastic scale of living. The increase of income relieves wives of the strain which great economy necessarily involves, and gives them a greater amount of leisure to perform their social duties, and to render the little personal services so essential to the comfort of their families.
In no other class do we see a greater divergence between the rating of the women and that of the men. On the one hand, we see the men graded by a standard of an intellectual nature; on the other hand their womenfolk are rated according to a standard purely social and pecuniary, with no regard to utility. Both are conservative and tend to be archaic depending in a large measure upon the institution where the teaching is done.
The conservatism shown in clinging to ancient ideals of womanhood is illustrated by the attitude of these learned men toward the admission of women into their ranks on an equality with themselves. “There has prevailed a strong sense that the admission of women to the privileges of the higher learning (as the Eleusinian mysteries) would be derogatory to the dignity of the learned craft. It is, therefore, only recently, and almost solely in the industrially most advanced communities, that the higher grades of schools have been freely opened to women. And even under the urgent circumstances prevailing in the modern industrial communities, the highest and most reputable universities show an extreme reluctance to making the move. The sense of class worthiness, that is to say of status, of an honorific differentiation of the sexes according to a distinction between superior and inferior intellectual dignity, survives in a vigorous form in these corporations of the aristocracy of learning. It is felt that women should, in all propriety, acquire only such knowledge as may be classed under one or the other of two heads: (1) such knowledge as conduces immediately to a better performance of domestic service—the domestic sphere; (2) such accomplishments and dexterity, quasi-scholarly and quasi-artistic, as plainly come in under the head of the performance of vicarious leisure. Knowledge is felt to be unfeminine if it is knowledge which expresses the unfolding of the learner’s own life, the acquisition of which proceeds on the learner’s own cognitive interest, without prompting from the canons of propriety.”[65]
Where women enter the higher fields of learning, they show a tendency—although not so marked as in the past—to select those lines of work and thought which have no practical bearing on every day life. In other words, they follow those lines of study which are most similar to those pursued by the students of the Middle Ages who sought knowledge without any thought of its utility. This tendency of women is evident in co-educational institutions where their selection of studies shows their object in the main to be the acquisition of knowledge of a cultural rather than a practical nature. This choice is most suitable to their object in life assuming that object to be matrimony. The other activity followed mostly by college bred women—school teaching, makes little demand outside of the lines of work pursued by most women.
Men long ago learned that there is a demand for highly trained minds in fields other than that of teaching. They have adapted themselves to this demand until we see men deserting studies of a purely cultural value, and pursuing those more applicable to every day life. Women are showing the same tendencies in communities where there is a demand for their services in fields other than teaching, and where matrimony has become more of an uncertainty and economic independence a fact.
When women pursue their college work with a definite practical purpose in view, they too will desert those lines of work, largely, if not wholly, valued for their culture side alone.
In the schools directly controlled by the people we find a greater appreciation of democracy than in the colleges. The public has great reverence for custom and tradition so long as these conservative forces do not interfere too much with practical utility. This sense of practical utility is closely allied to the commercial principle of getting the best to be had for money laid out. This principle appeals to all save when it is a violent contradiction to the accepted moral code. The policy conferring the greatest benefit to the greatest number at the least cost is adopted if it does not conflict with more powerful interests. As a result of this policy women are admitted into professional work, especially school teaching, because they will not only work for less wages than will the men, but will do a better grade of work for less money.