Common Sense About Women

by Thomas Wentworth Higginson

But it will be said, Ought not girls to be taught to sew? Undoubtedly. All boys ought to be taught the use of hammer and plane and screw-driver, and, for that matter, plain sewing also. Girls need sewing no doubt; and they should be taught it at home, or at school, or wherever they can find a teacher. But, for all this, to assign to sewing any thing like the same relative importance that belonged to it a hundred years ago, or even twenty years ago, is to overlook the changed conditions of modern society. Let us consider this a moment.

The Old-World theory was that all imaginable hard work was to be done by human hands. But the New-World theory is—for it is a New World wherever the theory is recognized—that all this work should be done, as far as possible, by human brains. Napoleon defined it as his ultimate intention for the French people, “to convert all trades into arts,” the head doing the work of the hands. This applies to woman’s work as much as any other. The epoch of private spinning and weaving was an epoch of barbarism; the vast mills of Lowell and Fall River now do that toil. The sewing-machine does a day’s work in an hour. But all this machinery came out of somebody’s brain, and is adapted to a race of women with brains. The treasurer of half a dozen manufacturing corporations told me last week, that, though the mills were filled with French and Irish, the superiority of American “help” was just as manifest as ever, and the manufacturers would gladly keep them if they could: they could almost always tend more looms, for instance. Those who have tried to teach the use of the sewing-machine to the Southern negroes or poor whites know how hard it is. A sewing-machine is a step in civilization: its presence in a house, like that of a piano, proves a certain stage of advancement. Its course runs parallel with that of the common-school; and an agent for this machine, like those who sell improved agricultural implements, would instinctively avoid those regions where there are no schoolhouses.

I do not undervalue the use of the hands, or the need of physical training for both boys and girls. But, after all, the hands must be kept subordinate to the head. If industrial training is to be the first thing, then every Irish parent who takes his ten-year-old girl from school, and sends her to the factory, is in the path of virtue. If, on the other hand, it be found that some time can be advantageously taken from books, and given to some handiwork, without loss of intellectual progress, that is a different thing. That is only an intellectual eight-hour bill or five-hour bill; and, for one, I should gladly favor that. But let it be done as securing the best education for all; not as a class-education, or as merely utilitarian: and let it be done as rigidly for boys as for girls. Let us not set out with the theory that a boy may avail himself of all the divisions of labor in modern society, but that every girl must still spin her own cloth, and sew her own seam.

LIX.
CASH PREMIUMS FOR STUDY.

On looking over the Harvard College catalogue, I am struck with the great pecuniary inducements which are held out to tempt young gentlemen to study. There are, to begin with, one hundred and seventeen “scholarships;” yielding incomes ranging from $40 to $350 annually, but averaging $225. The total income of these is $19,635. Then there are “loan” and “beneficiary” funds, amounting to $4,700 annually, and given or lent in sums from $25 to $75. Then there are “monitorships,” yielding $700 per annum; and various money prizes, amounting to some $1,200. The whole amount that is or may be paid in cash to undergraduates every year is more than $25,000, which may perhaps reach a hundred and fifty young men. No wonder that the catalogue asserts that “The experience of the past warrants the statement that good scholars of high character, but slender means, are seldom or never obliged to leave college for want of money.”

Probably one-sixth of the eight hundred undergraduates of Harvard College receive direct pecuniary aid in studying there; and, as scholarship is an essential in securing most of this pecuniary aid, it is probable that half the high scholars in every class are thus directly helped. Observe that this is in addition to the general value of the college endowments to all students, over and above what they pay for tuition,—an amount lately estimated by the academical authorities at one thousand dollars, at least, for every graduate. Apart from all this, I was told many years ago, by that very acute observer, the late President James Walker of Harvard University, that in his opinion one-quarter of the undergraduates were maintained in college through the personal self-denial and sacrifices of mothers and sisters.

But what a tremendous protective tariff, what an irresistible “discriminating duty,” is this! While boys are thus bribed largely, year by year, to come to Cambridge, and study,—so that the influence of all this promise of pecuniary aid is felt through every academy and high school in the land,—we find, on the other hand, that every girl who wishes to pursue similar studies is expected to pay at the full market rates for all she gets, and even then cannot enter Harvard College. In some of our normal schools her board may be paid, I believe, on condition that she becomes a teacher; but I know of no place where she herself is paid, as young men are paid, merely to come and study. Ex-Gov. Bullock founded one scholarship at Amherst, of which the income is to be given by preference to a woman—when a woman is admitted! But unfortunately that time has not come. And yet those who sit by the banks of this golden stream, and monopolize all its benefits, have a tone of sublime contempt for those who are not permitted to approach it, and never can quite forgive the impecunious condition of these outcasts! “Your scholarship is not to be compared to ours,” they say to women. “Certainly not,” the women may fairly reply: “we were never paid salaries that we might become scholars.”

The thing that perpetually neutralizes all claims of chivalry, all professions of justice, all talk of fairness, as between the sexes, is this class of facts. Woman is systematically excluded from training, and then told she must not compete; if admitted to compete, she is so weighted by artificial disadvantages, that it is hard for her to win. If her brain is inferior, she should be helped; if her natural obstacles are greater, all other hinderances should be the more generously swept away. Give girls a chance at a high school, they use it, and they there equal boys in scholarship; in our academies, in our normal schools, there is no deficiency on their part. Even in our colleges they ask, as yet, only admittance, not cash premiums. Only admit them, and see if they do not hold their own unpaid, with the young men to whom you pay, collectively, twenty-five thousand dollars a year to stay there. Only a seat in a recitation-room, to be paid for at the full price,—is this so very much for a young girl to ask? Do be at least as generous as that school committee in a Massachusetts town which shall be nameless, who said seriously in their report, speaking of a certain appointment, “As this place offers neither honor nor profit, we do not see why it should not be filled by a woman”!

LX.
MENTAL HORTICULTURE.

There was once a public meeting held, at the request of some excellent ladies, to consider the question whether it might be possible for roses and lilies to grow together in the same garden. Many of the ladies were quite used to gardening, and had opinions of their own; but, as it was not proper for them to open their lips before people, they of course could not testify. So several respectable gentlemen—clergymen and professors—were invited to tell them all about it. Some of these gentlemen had seen a rose, and some had seen a lily, but it turned out that very few of them had ever happened to see a garden. Still, as they were learned men, they could give very valuable suggestions. One of them explained, that, as roses and lilies assimilated very different juices from the soil, they could not possibly grow in the same soil. Another pointed out, that, as they needed different proportions of sun and of air, they should have very different exposures, and therefore must be kept apart. Another, more daring, suggested, that, as God had put the two species into the same world, it was quite possible that they might grow in the same enclosure for a time, perhaps for about fourteen years, but that, if they were left longer together, they would certainly blight and destroy each other. All this seemed very conclusive; and the meeting was about to vote that roses and lilies should never be allowed to exist in the same garden, unless with a brick wall twenty feet high between.