|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 22
But on the other side, if emancipated women had not applied themselves,
since 1870, to the direction of education, literature, religion and
amusements, all these interests must have suffered serious neglect and
probable deterioration through the concentrating of the interests of the
ablest men in engineering, manufacturing, commerce and other fields of
pure and applied science. By popularizing these interests, women have
really humanized them, as all similar revolutions have done in the past.
In breaking up old forms and intellectual conventions they have set free
new and vital impulses. Whether the historian of the future will
consider this period of democratization and feminization a time of
advance may be uncertain; but it is certainly a time of liberated energy
and of broadening participation in all that is best in life.
V
The Economic Independence of Women
Nowhere does a human being escape compulsion. Even were he alone in the
world he would be forced to obey the physical laws governing gravity,
heat, cold, hunger and disease. No matter what his desires might be, he
would find himself limited and constrained by fixed laws, the inexorable
penalties of which he could escape only by obedience. If the man were
not alone, then each one of his companions would limit his freedom, and
he would limit each one in the group, if they were to live together in
peace and efficiency; and yet each of the man's companions would help to
free him from the tyranny of physical forces, from the social pressure
of others, and even from the bondage of his own nature.
Independence is thus an ideal to be achieved only through obedience. It
begins in self-subordination and reaches its finest realization in
social subordination. Since the beginning of time men who thought have
always dreamed of freedom; and for two hundred years now independence
has been a word to conjure with. But in so far as independence means
freedom to follow one's own unregulated desires, it is a fantastic and
dangerous dream; and yet this dream of impossible independence has been
among the greatest influences in furthering human development in the
past.
The old-time dependence of one individual on the immediate caprices of
another largely disappeared with the passing of slavery. But in place of
this personal subjection has come a more complex and in some ways more
compelling and crushing control through the monopoly of wealth. Property
has become the medium through which the most binding of human relations
are organized. Accumulated wealth has become a great reservoir of power
to which some individuals gain access through rights of birth, others
through carefully guarded privileges, and still others through cunning
devices or through force; but the masses of the people must gain their
fragments of this wealth through arduous lifelong labor. Even the earth,
the original source of all wealth, is parceled out, and all of it is now
owned by individuals or groups who control it in their own interests.
One man may thus have thousands of acres which he cannot use, and which
he will not allow others to use, while another has not where to lay his
head. Laws jealously guard this wealth, which is the key to all
opportunity; and public opinion, that most subtle, pervasive and
compelling of all forms of law, gathers a thousand sacred initiations,
rites, ceremonies, prohibitions and ex-communications around it. A man
who has killed his neighbor, or ruined his friend's family, may be less
punished by society than one who cheats at cards.
In primitive life a man may be a man by virtue of what he is; to-day he
may have all the rights and privileges of any man by virtue of what he
possesses. In any community can be found strong men, honest, though
misplaced or unfortunate, begging bread, wasting their lives for want of
money to live decently. And beside these one sees other men of weak
physique and feeble minds, who have lived as parasites on society all
their lives, but who are handsomely dressed, well fed, and possessed of
power to do as they will, simply because they have access to wealth. It
is no wonder that if one would seek freedom to-day in America he must
look for her image on a gold coin.
It is not difficult to see why property has become such a powerful
instrument in civilization. Anything which a person really owns, in a
psychological sense, is a home for his soul. Really owning an object, a
toy, a garment, a watch or a home, means infusing one's personality into
it. A man who possesses significant things has a new body through which
his soul can work; this body trains his powers; and it should give him
life more abundantly. A landless man must become a soulless man. Of
course, we are not here speaking of legal ownership. Many people own
legally things into which they have never infused themselves; sometimes
they have so many things that no individual could possibly infuse
himself into them.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|