Their innocent instincts we turn to a curse,
Their bodies we torture, their powers we abuse,
The beast that humanity lives in fares worse
Than the beasts of the forest with nothing to lose.
Free creatures, sub-human—they never have known
The sins and diseases we force on our own.
And yet 'tis a beautiful creature!—tall—fair—
With features full pleasant and hand-wooing hair;
Kind, docile, intelligent, eager to learn;
And the longing we read in its eyes when they burn
Is to beg us to use it more freely to show
To each other the love that our new soul can know.
Our engines drive fast in earth, water and air;
Our resistless, smooth-running machines still unroll,
With brain-work unceasing and handiwork fair,
New material forms for each step on the soul;
But that soul, for the contact without which it dies,
Comes closest of all through that animal's eyes.
WOMEN TEACHERS, MARRIED AND UNMARRIED
We have still active and conspicuous among us, saying and doing foolish things about women, men, both eminent and ordinary, whose attitude in this matter will make them a shame to their children, and a laughing stock to their grandchildren. We are proud to exhibit name and portrait of the great-grandfather who signed the Declaration of Independence, but our descendants will forget as soon as possible those asinine ancestors who are to-day so writing themselves down—in their attitude in regard to women teachers, married and unmarried.
For long women were kept out of the schools altogether—education was for boys. They were not allowed to teach, save in a small way, in infant schools, or schools for girls; teaching was a masculine profession. Now they have equal educational opportunities—in large measure, and constitute the majority of pupils; and, what is more alarming, the majority of teachers. The "male mind"—essentially and hopelessly male—sees in this not the natural development of a long suppressed human being, but the entrance of females upon a masculine province.
In her relation of pupil, there is a large body of eminent educators clamoring that girls should be taught female things; that, whether our universities are turned into trade schools or not, the women's colleges and "annexes" should teach girls "the duties of wife and mother." By this, of course, they mean the duties of house-service, and, perhaps, of nursing. Nothing would scandalize these Antique Worthies more than to have girls taught the real duties of wife and mother!
Also, in the relation of pupils, a man of as high standing as Professor Barrett Wendell of Harvard claims that teaching girls lowers the mentality of men! In coeducational colleges the "male mind," seeing in the violent games of young men a profound educational influence (and large profits!), considers that the presence of the purely studious element—the girls—is an injury to the college, and is even now endeavoring to eliminate them.
But it is in treatment of women teachers that this sex attitude of mind is most prominent to-day, most offensive, and most ridiculous.
The first effect is, of course, to give to the woman teacher the lowest grades of work and the lowest pay. Even when she has forced her way into high-grade work, and won a good position over all competitors, her pay is still measured by her status as a female—not as a teacher. The "male mind" can never for a moment forget or overlook the fact that women are females; and is rigidly incapable of admitting that they are also human beings as much as he.