USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Congress of Women : held in the Woman's building, World's Columbian exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893 : with portraits, biographies and addresses > Part 85
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ated from floor to dome with the flag Lincoln had loved so well. All the officers of the government, its generals and ministers, appeared in full dress to do honor to the occasion. The marble statue was elevated to a proper height and surrounded with a platform draped with flags, for the President, the speakers and the families of those most nearly interested. The statue was completely enveloped in a great silk flag, and when Judge Davis, Lincoln's friend, drew the golden cord which confined it, unveiling the statue to public view amid the waving of banners and the sound of trumpets, a great shout went up from the multitude. Then glowing tributes to President Lincoln fell from the eloquent lips of Senator Matt Carpenter, Senator Cullom of Illinois, and the other distinguished orators who had been selected to speak. The great dome rang with his praises, and thrilled by the eloquence and passion of some of these utterances, sobs sometimes broke upon the air, and wails of sorrow. When the cere- mony was over, the audience thought of the artist, and called for her. Senator Matt Carpenter made his way to my scat upon the platform, and taking my hand, led me out before them, but I could only bow my thanks, my voice was too full of tears to speak in recognition of the cheers and flowers that greeted me. And so the people and the old-time friends of Abraham Lincoln expressed their satisfaction with my work.
It had been indeed a labor of love, not without its trials, but well rewarded by its final triumph. How this verdict was afterward confirmed in giving into my hands the commission for a statue of the immortal Farragut, I would like to tell you, but there is not the time now. This night when the Lincoln statue was unveiled in the rotunda of the Capitol was the supreme moment of my life. I had known and loved the man! My country had loved him and cherished his memory. In tears the people had parted with him. With shouts of joy and acclamations of affection they had received his image in the marble. Upon the very spot where a few years before they had gathered in sorrow to gaze upon his lifeless body lying there in state while a nation mourned, they had gathered again to unveil his statuc. "The marble is the resur- rection," say the old sculptors, and now the dead had arisen to live forever in the hearts of the people whom he loved so well.
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WOMAN AND HOUSEHOLD LABOR. By MRS. MARY HESS HULL.
Labor is getting thoughts into things; subduing the earth; gaining dominion over matter. The commission to do this was given to man-male and female. God labored; at least brought forth, produced the earth about us. He then gave it to us to be completed by "the sweat of the brow." The brute labors, but it is by instinct, or when harnessed to man's thought. The brute works without thought. But man's labor, to be real labor, must be intelligent and it must be free. It must be skilled and wise and true; differing in kind, as individuals differ, as nations and sexes differ. The home has done everything for the world and its civilization and industry, but somehow the working powers of the home have not received their share of attention from either man or woman. It has, however, held its own, and proved its mighty right to life through wars and pestilence, famine and neglect. But its running machinery is all out of keep- ing with the times. The burden is simply immense, and " will not down." It can upset all the tranquillity and power and the blessing of the home. We want to entertain our friends, we want to enjoy our books, we want to eat our food under spiritual social artistic conditions, but it all costs labor, skilled labor, MRS. MARY HESS HULL. real labor, yet there seems to be no real place for it; no time for it; nobody wants to do it; and today it is the only labor in all the wide world of industry that goes begging. Every other field is overcrowded, while men and women are begging for work. Somehow there is friction, lack of skill, no right division of housework, no regular hours; it is not a profession, it has no name, not even a trade. It is really the only labor left over from barbarous times which is done by so-called " servants" instead of laborers.
All American life, all true life, is or should be a service from the President down, but we speakof street-car drivers, diggers, statesmen, coach men, teachers or preachers, but "servants " in household labor. Somehow this is all wrong; it seems there ought not to be any housework at all; we don't like to,see it, nor hear of it, nor do it; a man or woman can work in a shop or in the field, and not feel the same friction and worry and pinch that he does at real work in the home. Home seems to be the one place to love and live in; is this why work is an intruder? Husband and children do not like to have mother forever at work; hence the rule has been for her not only to be sure to do it and to do it all, but also not to annoy others with it. She must always have it out of the way, and her slippers and smiles on, and by some magic appear unto men not to fast or to suffer, nor to be tired or worried like other folks. There must be some
Mrs. Mary Hess Hull is a native of Ohio. She received her education in a Young Ladies' Academy. Under the direc- tion of an educated Scotchman she studied and read extensively. She married young and is the mother of six children, to whom she is a close companion and a devoted mother. Her special work, outside of her home life, has been in the interest of temperance and purity. Her principal literary works are " Columbus and What he Found," for children, and " Lectures and Studies in Robert Browning's Poetry." She is director of the Department of Domestic Arts in Armour Institute, in Chicago, where she hopes to solve some of the domestic and social problems of the times. She is a member of the Congregational Church. Her address is Armour Institute, Chicago. Ill.
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way to overeome all this frietion. The same science and thought must be brought to bear upon this peculiar problem that is brought to bear upon other problems.
Women are in need of training; they have been drudges and slaves from time immemorial, but they have never been laborers, skilled and respeeted as men; that time is only at hand. Women will find, as men have, that the very best way to get work out of the way is to do it in the very best way, and before we know it, the very doing of it in the best spirit, we have grown in wisdom and in stature. We have beeome educated in body, soul and spirit-"we kiss the rod" and thank God and work. How familiar that man of Nazareth was with the smallest details of labor in the house, and out of it. How well he knew the miracle of the yeast, the leaven in the lump. He knew the light of the house couldn't shine if it was under a bushel, or any other sort of a smothering lamp-shade, but instead it must be on top of things and shine out. There was the salt, worthless if it had lost its savor; there was the garment not worth patehing, and the wine bottles too old to be used.
And how the daily bread problem must have pressed upon this family of Naza- reth! There was the carpenter's beneh which must have helped that out. How strange to think of how this Master of material things so conquered that He brought the very kingdom of Heaven into them. There was ministry and service and eapa- bility, and love in labor, not that which must be ministered unto. Only Mary ean ever know all that must have taken place in that wonderful home. So dignified was the patient labor of love there that our homes can never be the same since the labor problem was taken up by this Son of Man, and conquered. Christian eivilization has brought more labor into our homes than it has taken out. According to short-sighted people, it would seem as though so mueh had gone out that our homes ought to be cased of much of their labor. Spinning, weaving, threadmaking, grinding of wheat, tailoring, have all had birth in the honie, and gone out, and it would seem that the home might be thus relieved. Life and industry are alike, always begetters of more and more of their kind. The object of life is more life, and so it is with industry. The home has been the cradle of almost every industry, and it does not seem as though the cradle was as yet ready for the garret. Industry and trade grow and thrive on the wealth of the human wants, and we must get away down into the " whys" and " wherefores" of the present day life before we ean begin to understand what most troubles us as women and as housekeepers.
See the good man of today; nothing so burdens him as his wife's housework. He'stands by like a great gentle animal ready to lay down his life, pocket-book and all, on the altar of the labor problem of the home; he has the greatest task in the world on his hands, and it is killing him as well as her. See the difference between any butcher's shop and his home. The husband superintends one and the wife the other. The labor of one is systematieally arranged, every sort of convenienec put in it; it is made attraetive in every way, the best tools are in it, and pleasantness and order reign. Why? Because of the money there is in it. The home is not system- atieally arranged, every sort of convenience is not put into it; order and pleasantness does not reign, for the woman is doing a hundred different things, and none of them thoroughly, skillfully. Why? Because there is no money in it, nothing is to be made out of it. The wife's work and care is looked upon as being a sort of nonentity; it is a small business; the sermons are all preached at him, not her. The work is not con- sidered a trade or a profession; it has no eommereial value, it has no name. If she signs her name to anything which asks her even what her oeeupation is, she has none, though we know she has worked fourteen or fifteen hours every day and Sunday since she has been homekeeping, so it goes, and what is to be done? The first thing to do is to elevate the work and in order to elevate it, it must be done well. In order to do it well, we must think well. The best methods invented by you or me, or by our grandmothers or by men, must come to the surface. Mr. Atkinson, the inventor of the Aladdin oven, says he spends most of his time overeoming "the inertia of women in using any new device." She blindly refuses to do anything but obey the old way,
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even when somebody thinks it up for her. But it is fast changing; woman can think, and she is going slowly to get about it. Freedom and responsibility go hand in hand. Our liberty is going to cost us something. We must work; we must get the order of work; we must love the law of labor. Labor is the law of development, the law of progress, and we must work freely, without let or hindrance from any mortal source. This ugly labor problem in our sacred institution the home, is perhaps our first great problem. It ties us hand and foot-just now-we must first learn the great lesson of labor, its laws, its base of energies and its productive nature, its blessedness, and its mission to us.
We must capture its life, appropriate its strength by overcoming it; we must mas- ter it, make it a joy, reduce it to order and system. This takes study and time and opportunity, but every one of us can have a hand in it, each in her own way, in her own life. Think, plan, experiment, invent, investigate, get the best method. Support and organize training schools. Make our work what other work in the world is, a science and an art. There is a law and order method in housekeeping. It is a mark of most joyous hope for our future that what Frances Power Cobb said some years ago is fast coming true. Said she: "It is not high genius, but feeble inability to cope with domestic government, which generally inspires the women who wish to abdicate the throne of home and take to the homeless American boarding house, or to the continental pension." Our women of genius are not abdicating home, and our most highly educated women are the ones who are awakening to these facts. They study to make housework not a thing of drudgery, but the sacred intelligent foundation of all other arts, and that it is the "houseband" that keeps the home together. Home arts succor nourish, and bless mankind in every way.
THE SWEETEST LIVES.
The sweetest lives are those to duty wed, Whose deeds, both great and small, Are close-knit strands of an unbroken thread Where love ennobles all; The world may sound no trumpets, ring no bells, The Book of Life the shining record tells.
Thy love shall chant its own beatitudes After its own life-working. A child's kiss Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad; A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich; A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong; Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense Of service which thou renderest.
-Mrs. Browning.
THE HOME AND ITS FOUNDATIONS. By REV. ANNIS FORD EASTMAN.
We can afford to lose all but the ideal; to part with all that we have if only there be left to us that which we have not, which fills us with such longing as the poet hints may help to make us immortal. Not that which is of most value to man, but that which ought to be and so is to be-becoming the star of promise that goes before all seekers of the ideal. It is fancy and not fact, such fact, perhaps, as Browning calls " facts' essence," that rules in the poet and prophet's world, the only world worth living in.
The worship of the Real has neither poet nor prophet. Literature, religion, art, song-these all are gifts of the ideal. Song dies and languishes in the realm of that which is for want of atmosphere. Civilization itself is the gift of the ideal, if it be as one has declared, the sum of those institutions which are shaped out of the best inspirations of mankind.
Because this is so, I affirm that we might well afford to loose all the rich heritage of knowledge which scientific investigations have given us in the last fifty years; we might dispense with all the inventions and appliances which make human life safer, more comfortable, more varied in resources for pleasure; all that skill in medicine and surgery which has taught REV. ANNIS FORD EASTMAN. man how to resist for a lengthening term of years the foes of the body; all the marvelous achievements of man's intellect and the triumphs of his handiwork which make of this generation the most knowing, most skillful and most luxurious that this old planet has ever borne upon her bosom-all these things might better fall away from us than that we should lose the vision of the ideal in human life and destiny, which is the very life-breath of progress. The question is still as pertinent as when it fell from the lips of the Great Teacher, " What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose himself?'
I need hardly say that I would speak of home, not as it has been or is, but as it may be, ought to be, as you and I may help to make it. The homage we shall pay to the ideal home is not at all incompatible with a brave look at the actual home upon which it is based in its origin. The family relations which make the home have a physical basis-" first, that which is natural; afterward, that which is spiritual." This fair flower which is at once the perfect fruit and the life-bearing seed of civilization, finds its root in that dependence of the sexes upon each other for completion of life which runs through all the forms of life, animal and even vegetable. Marriage is the foundation of home, marriage and the long continued infancy and helplessness of man. In the lair of the beasts, the hive of the bees, the nests of the birds, home had its beginning. We see it struggling up through the promiscuous and temporary unions
Annis Ford Eastman is a native of Peoria, Ill. She was born April 24, 1852. Her parents were George and Catherine Stehley. She was educated in high schools and in Oberlin College. She is the wife of Rev. Samnel E. Eastman, and is her- self a minister of the Gospel. In religious faith she claims to be an undenominational Christian. She is a member and the pastor of a Congregational Church, and is a zealous, earnest woman of ability and great strength of character, and is doing a noble work in the world. Her permanent postoffice address is West Bloomfield, N. Y.
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of savage men, evolving slowly and painfully one form after another of sexual rela- tionship, until at last some form of marriage grew stable enough to determine relation- ship with at least one of the parents. That was the birthday of civilized society. From this time the family struggles up through the miasmatic régimes of polygamy and polyandry in their various forms until the ideal form of a monogamous marriage emerges, that ideal which is still so poorly realized among the most cultivated nations.
These considerations move us not only to gratitude for our heirship of the ages, but lead us also to ask whether the family relations, as we have them today, are not capable of further improvement at our hands and those of future generations. Some claim that the family as we know it is a fleeting form of human development, a pass- ing lesson in the divine art of living together. Nobody can claim this unless he is able to forecast the future and declare what shall be. There is a wonderful reach in Christ's teaching on this point when He challenges the claims of His family upon Him thus, " Who is my mother and my brethren? For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother and sister and mother." Did He mean to teach that spiritual relationships are the only real and enduring ones-that oneness of spirit and purpose is a stronger tie than that of blood? It is, however, beyond our purpose to speculate as to the future form of human society. The foundation of the family, as we know it today, is monogamous marriage, and home is the result of the long continued infancy and helplessness of the young of man. When childhood had come to extend over a period of a dozen years, a period more than doubled where several children were born in succession to the same parents, then the blessed relationship of the home grew up. " A little child shall lead them."
This is the historical foundation of the family. Has it an ethical foundation? Does it subserve the highest ends of society? Is it in line with progress, and is it cap- able of producing a higher type of man? It can not be doubted that a single affection and a life union of man and woman has borne thus far the best fruits of civilization, has given the highest and purest pleasure to mankind, and has afforded the best prep- aration of the young for life and for service to the race. How shall the coming gen- eration actualize this ideal so as to make it yield greater blessings to humanity? I will indicate a few lines in which progress may be sought.
First. The recognition of the entire equality of man and woman as complement- ary parts of humanity-of one humanity. The complete dependence of man and woman, and their entire inter-dependence. This would mean equal opportunities for education on all lines to both sexes; the free use and development of all their powers; the sharing of by men and women in the great labor, in the results of which they have an equal interest, of framing, interpreting and executing the laws of society; equal advantages and protection under these laws, and equal representation in the govern- ment.
Second. The recognition of manhood and womanhood as more excellent than fatherhood and motherhood. How all chivalric souls of men leap to declare that these things are done. Done in them, perhaps, done ideally, sentimentally, but not actually. Not yet has the world at large acknowledged the woman's right to a life as large as her talents, an education which shall take account of her natural bent, and a financial prosperity commensurate with her ability and her labors. Not ten years ago a learned theologian said: "God foreordained man for the field and woman for the hearth." This is the free translation: "God has foreordained man to breathe oxygen and woman carbonic acid gas." The man for the harvest field, the orchard and the vineyard, and woman for the laundry and the kitchen. From the opposite pole, the setter of this world's fashions, the fiat went forth: "It must be every woman's supreme aim to be beautiful." Out of this low ambition have grown the tortures of the body for women in all ages and in all climes. Lord Bacon says that true friendship is only possible between equals. How much more true this is of the close friendship of mar- riage-of married companionship, intelligent, sympathetic companionship in all the varied interests of life, in the highest joy of existence; this companionship is only possible between equals in culture and opportunity.
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Who is to blame that this equality of the sexes is not attained? Nobody. This is one of the hardest truths for human nature to accept. Given an evil, an abuse, something contrary to present light, and the mind takes this as a challenge to find somebody to blame; and when the curse is rolled off, even on to a serpent, the mind experiences a sense of relief, just as when the unknown quantity in an algebraic prob- lem is found. Nobody is to blame. This is one of the problems to be worked out; it is a stage in the evolution of the spiritual man. Men are as much interested in it as women. The complete emancipation of women will be as one has said, the regenera- tion of man.
Nothing is more unworthy of us, in the working out of this problem, than an appeal to the conduct of life in the orders of animals below man, to prove either the equality or the inequality of male and female in humanity. We know the argument: The male bird sings louder and sweeter than the female; therefore woman can not be a poct. In most mammals the male is stronger, more vigorous, more beautiful, and the female has the chief care of the young; therefore a woman can not understand politics. Why not collect data on the opposite side? The male of the American ostrich sits on the eggs, hatches them out and takes principal charge of the young. A species of spider has been discovered of which the female devours her consort when he is of no further use to her. These things prove nothing. Our progress is away from nature. What is natural in this sense is not the best.
When women are wholly persons and not property, when they seek freely the development of all their gifts and powers, then marriage will not be barter and home will not be a place of escape from the world to the woman, but it will be the highest product of men and women at their best and purest.
I have emphasized the rights of women in this ideal family, but there is a right of man which needs a fuller recognition from this generation-the right of a man to be as virtuous as a woman.
I deprecate the emphasis laid today upon woman's work, woman's faith and woman's enthusiasm for humanity. Does it not point to a day when the sexes may be arrayed against each other, not on the old basis of strength versus subtility, of brains versus no brains, but on the basis of religion versus materialism, of spirituality versus animalism. If the old order, the pagan ideal, of such antagonism between the sexes as made of the man a tyrant and of the woman a toy, a slave, was fundamentally wrong, and held the race down, surely an antagonism which makes of the woman a worshiping, spiritual being, and of the man a moncy-making, prayerless machine, is equally fatal to the hopes of that crowning race which shall arise when the ideal man shall be mated with the ideal woman, like perfect music set to noble words. Have I over-stated the danger? In whose hands are the benevolences of our churches, their missionary work, their prayer-mectings? We talk timidly of giving woman the ballot. Let us beware lest she monopolize all that makes human affairs worth voting about. There is no man's cause that is not woman's; there is no woman's cause that is not man's. " If either be small, slight natured, miserable, how shall the race grow?" It is time for men and women to realize that the home, the church, the state and the world are theirs, that they must rise or sink together, " dwarfed or godlike, bond or free." The children of the ideal home must not only boast of the precepts of a godly mother, but of the example of a godly father. To this end the ideals of manhood must be made high like those of womanhood. There must not be two standards of conduct in the home-one scemly for the little boy, unseemly for the little girl. The same social verdict must be pronounced against sinners, against purity, man and woman, closed doors to vice in either sex, open doors of help to repenting sinners of either sex.
But the last and best characteristic of the ideal home will be the realization by its makers and members that it is not an end in itself. The fire of the family life, the soul-culture gained in the duties and affections of the home, these must be as fuel to the flame which is kindled on the hearthstone to give light and heat to the darkness
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