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Page 21
As to the feminizing influence of exclusively women teachers on manners
and morals and general attitude toward life there can be no real doubt.
Boys and girls cannot spend eight or twelve impressionable years of
childhood and youth under the constant daily influence of women without
having the ladylike attitude toward life strongly emphasized. To deny
this is to repudiate the power of constant involuntary suggestion and
association. Whether it is desirable or not, is another question. The
change may be all in the direction of advancing civilization; but just
as in the assimilation of our subject races, the philosophic mind must
be distressed by the disappearance of so many varieties of speech,
customs, and artistic and industrial products, so in this present
assimilation, one cannot help regretting the steady disappearance of the
katabolic qualities of the human male. One does not need to say that
this feminized product is better or worse than what we have had, but it
is certainly narrower, and less in harmony with the world's thought and
work, than it formerly was.
If we turn from education to the press we have similar conditions.
During these past few years, hundreds of journals have sprung up devoted
to women's special interests. They are almost all of them showy,
fragmentary, personal, concrete and emotional. It is difficult to find
one that represents general or abstract interests. At least one of these
journals which boasts a fabulous circulation is supported by its women
subscribers and readers to oppose the larger interests of women in
education, industry and political life. At least, if it does not oppose
these interests, it does not aid them. Imagine a million German women
sending the Kaiser one dollar and a half a year to induce him to tell
them once a month to go back to their kitchens, churches and children!
The newspapers of America have steadily changed during the last three
decades in the same direction. Editorial pages and news columns have
been steadily modified in the direction of fragmentary, egoistic,
personal and sensational, or at least emotional, appeals. These are the
qualities of children's minds and of undeveloped minds everywhere. The
change is, of course, a part of the larger democratic movement of our
time, and many causes have contributed to bring it about. Had women not
been so active, something of the same sort would have happened; but if
women were all to forget how to read overnight, there is little doubt
that the newspapers would find it advantageous to print more
statesmanlike editorials and more general and abstract news.
With the weeklies and monthlies, the change taking place is the same.
The new reading public, brought in by increase in population and by
popular education, does not support the _Atlantic_, the _Century_ and
_Scribner's,_ but turns to _Munsey's_, _McClure's_ and _Everybody's_.
The very change in names speaks of the new personal and egoistic element
that has come into journalism. Of course, such changes are only in part
due to the influence of women, but the change is in the direction of the
qualities that characterize distinctively women's journals.
In books, the personal and romantic novel has taken precedence over
every other form of literature. Many of these are written by women;
their circulation, both through libraries and through sales, is much
greater with women than with men; and in many of them the personal
gossip is as transient as that which fills the evening papers.[31]
[31] _The Feminine Note in Fiction_, by W.L. COURTNEY, London, Chapman &
Hall, 1904; the author tries to prove that there is such a thing as a
feminine style in fiction.
In the churches, especially in the ritualistic churches, women have long
been the faithful attendants. Nowhere, except in the churches which make
a rationalistic and abstract appeal, and in the Ethical Societies, does
one find a preponderance of men. In 1903, a careful enumeration of all
attendants at places of worship was made in the city of London. The
count was taken on fair Sundays in autumn, and covered both morning and
evening services. Sixty-one per cent. of all adult attendants were
women, 146,372 more women than men passing through the doors.
About the same time a similar census was made in the part of New York
City lying on Manhattan Island. The women were in excess by 171,749,
and formed 69 per cent. of all attendants. Even church service, if not
entirely tied to set forms, must seek to interest those who occupy the
pews; and no observer can fail to note in both England and America, a
movement toward ritualism on the one hand, and on the other, toward
popular, personal, concrete and sometimes sensational preaching. The
same general changes are taking place in libraries, in the drama, in
concerts, in all group activities connected with learning and the fine
arts.
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