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 99
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toilers, from among the poor and illiterate of other lands longing to find in a new home, under a new flag, that comfort and reward for labor which could not be theirs in the already over-crowded fatherland.
The consideration shown them, their independent and responsible position, filled them with a novel sense of individual importance, and stimulated them to ambitions heretofore unknown. They have swept over the whole country, and that they have not entirely uprooted and blotted out the native stock is proof of its original strength. But while it is in a sense still the controlling force, how under these circumstances could a national type be formed? Look around you in any city of the land. Do you see Americans? Do not your eyes fall rather upon faces unmistakably Irish or Ger- man or Swedish, Italian, or other marked nationality? How many generations will be needed to harmonize these dissimilar types, even if today were to witness the coming of the last immigrant? Give time for the embryo American to come forward and claim his heritage.
Whether he will possess all the nervous energy of his predecessors is doubtful. So far as climate affects him, he will, of course, be much the same; but the relations of food supply to population, the inevitable change in habits and pursuits and all those conditions which the years will impose upon us, must affect the temperament of later generations. Even now the first settled parts of the country are accused of looking with an assumption of dignity upon the crudities of younger sections. And these in return have shown the customary heedless disregard of the wisdom of their elders, dubbing them old fogies, and scorning the quiet respectability of New England vil- lages as the decrepitude of old age. Ah! but there is a pace which kills, and the decadence of a nation comes only by the follies of its constituents. Its life may be · long or short; its influence great or small; its career brilliant or inglorious; its fame enduring or transient. It will be strengthened by the morality, conservative business methods and true patriotism of its people; it may be destroyed by reckless specula- tion, individual ambition, sectional strife, or anything else which weakens its physical or moral fiber.
How many of our men live, or seem to live, only to do business. The man seems lost, submerged under its exactions. The thing he created to serve him as a means to an end is transformed into the master, to which he is chained. He no longer seeks amusements; home sees little of him; wife and children are small incidents in his daily life; friendship is an almost forgotten word; general reading is out of the question; and the grind of the counting room or office goes on year after year, till the wheels stop, utterly worn out. These men tell us, when they are implored to give up busi- ness and take needed rest, that they would rather " wear out than rust out." Rust out, indeed! Does money-making-for that is the great incentive in most cases-does this constitute the only legitimate and worthy employment of time? Is there not today a large field in philanthropy, science, art, literature and healthy recreation of many kinds, which can profitably and agrecably occupy one's powers, conferring benefit in the change it affords, as well as by enlarging the bounds of human sympathy and knowledge? Why should one's success in life be measured by the amount of wealth he has acquired? It does not always represent industry or honesty or any other virtue, and to accept such a standard would be to prove that during our exceptional progress we have lost something precious that we once had. Such gross materialism is not a worthy result of all this toil and struggle, nor an acceptable answer to the prayers and hopes of our fathers.
Where are our grand old men, the Gladstones of our country, hale and hearty, still young at eighty-four, enjoying life and foremost in questions relating to our welfare? We have a right to the accumulated wisdom of those who have had the experiences of life as teachers. "Young men for action, old men for counsel," is still and always will be the natural order. We can ill afford to lose the services of our leaders who have been falling so fast around us. And the almost universal verdict is: " Killed by over- work." Not by age, nor by accidental disease, but cut off in their prime, the victims
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of nervous exnaustion. The tremendous strain upon the nervous system, which is wearing out our people in business, social and domestic life, is a serious matter. All seem keyed up to an extreme tension, and the evil does not end with the individual. The law of heredity is that an overtaxed vitality reproduces itself in a feeble offspring, at least having strong tendencies to mental, as well as physical, infirmities. Insanity is increasing among us. Our asylums are quite inadequate to the demands upon them. There is a constant cry for more room in which to shelter the poor demented beings who have become a menace to the peace and safety of their homes. Certainly parents have no right to bequeath this affliction to their children, neither have they the right to bestow a wrecked nervous system, which is the legitimate predecessor of insanity. Isolation, hard and monotonous work, have filled many wards of the retreats in our agricultural sections with the wives and daughters of farmers. These women have not neglected the wash-tub for the piano; they have not written books instead of rocking the cradle; they have listened to the steady thud of the churn- dasher, rather than to the silvery and enticing accents of the "female orator;" they have brewed and baked and scrubbed according to the most orthodox prescriptions; they have literally staid at home and looked carefully after the welfare of their house- holds; and yet these patterns of domestic industry head the list of demented women. "True 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true." Some sage has observed that "it is worry, not work, which kills;" and it must certainly be true that work with worry is doubly exhausting, for it depresses both mind and body, preventing that quiet rest which is so necessary for recuperation.
Now that physical culture is attracting so much attention, what with rowing and running and tennis and bowling, riding, swimming and base-ball, the muscle of our sons and daughters bids fair to be tolerably developed. True, this may, and probably will, be abused; but it is a move in the right direction, and will give to the country some superb physical specimens of men and women. The future race is partly depend- ent on our women, and nervous, hysterical girls will produce children with nerves irritable and over sensitive. It is popular to publish articles exhorting them to do thus and so, because upon them must rest the responsibility of motherhood. To many of these I say heartily, "Amen." But after all, that is only half the matter. Young men are to bear the responsibilities of fatherhood, and it is therefore just as important that they should be virtuous and temperate, deserving the respect and confidence which their position should command. Healthy minds in healthy bodies the coming generations demand from all.
In the name of our watchword, liberty; in the name of our English-speaking ancestry, in the name of our early defenders against foreign interference, and of later upholders of the nation's right to decide as to its citizenship and their duties, and for the sake of those who will come after us and who will have to suffer for our mistakes, let us think upon these things, squarely face the issues, and act in the courage of con- viction for justice, patriotism and self-preservation. Then will "the nervous Ameri- can" stand as a shining example of wisdom and prudence as well as of energy and industry.
CHICAGO WOMEN. By DR. SARAH HACKETT STEVENSON.
[Read on Chicago Day.]
Twenty-two years ago to-day, as I was about to take the train from my native town to this city, a telegram came, saying that Chicago was in ashes, that the people needed food and clothing. I turned back, began a canvass of our own and our neighbor's kitchens and wardrobes, and the next day we shipped a carload of necessities for the destitute. I followed after in a few days; my duties as a medical student called me to the barracks, where the sick and destitute were cared for, and where I had an opportunity to observe the devoted work of Chicago women. From that day to this I have been in touch with them and feel qualified to speak both of their faults and their virtues. The young women then are matrons now, the matrons, many of them are dead and a new generation is fill- ing the homes of a new Chicago. But the old spirit born of the war and the fire is still the ruling spirit.
Though we deplore calamity we must acknowl- edge its humanizing effects. The proof of this in the great calamity of 1871 is found no less among Chi- cago's own people than in the noble response of the world at large. While it is too true that here and there a human vulture was found who feasted upon the dire necessities of his neighbors, yet, for the most DR. SARAH HACKETT STEVENSON. part, the lost image of God was found again in the every day man and woman. The common sorrow, as in war times, drew people closer together and made it easy for them to work side by side.
So the genius for organization has found here a fruitful soil, and it is to this power born of affliction that Chicago women owe their advancement. There is probably no city in the world whose women are so bonded together for the promotion of the various interests of life. Indeed, this has gone so far, and the societies of women have multiplied to such an extent, it is a serious question if the healthful limit has not been reached.
Twenty years of unbounded prosperity have tended to make us vain-the height of prosperity is the most dangerous period in the life of any community or individual. Again, this tendency to organize is not conducive to the highest individual development. While we have great organizations of women, we have few, if any, great women. I scarcely know one who has made any great and original contribution
Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson was born in Buffalo Grove, Ogle County, Ill. Her parents were Col. John D. and Sarah H. Stevenson. She was educated at Mt. Carroll Seminary, State Normal University, Bloomington, and Woman's Medical College of Northwestern University. Has traveled and studied in Enrope four different times. Her special work has been in the interest of medicine and the medical education of women. Her profession is that of medicine, and she is a member of the International Gynæcological Society, the Pan-American Medical Association, the American Medical Asso- ciation, the Chicago Medical Society, the Chicago Medico-Surgical Society, president of the staff of the National Temper- ance Hospital, member of the Illinois State Board of Health, Consultant at the Woman's Hospital, Consultant at the Belle- vne Hospital, Batavia, Professor of Obstetrics in the Woman's Medical College Northwestern University, president of the Chicago Woman's Club, a member of Fortnightly, etc. In religious faith she is Episcopalian. Her postoffice address is Chicago, Ill.
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to any department of thought or work. The great people of the world, as a rule, are not developed in societies, but almost always in solitude. Then, too, if one belongs to an organization which, by the united effort of its members, accomplishes this or that work, quite frequently one is deceived into the belief that he individually has done the work, and thus is begotten an exaggerated opinion of one's own powers.
In brief, the Chicago woman has attracted so much attention of late, has been the recipient of so much adulation, it is well for us, for our own sakes, as well as for all women, to bring out the quadrant and the line, take our latitude and longitude and sound our depths. Of one thing we may be assured, without quadrant or soundings, we have not arrived! We are still at sea! And many of us who are known as great commanders are only common sailors. Common, did I say? All honor to the com- monest of common who does his duty. Who knows if in the infinite adjustment of the relation of things the common shall not be exalted, as the last shall be first?
In our population of fifteen hundred thousand, probably about one-half are women, for we are midway between the excess of one sex in New England and of the other sex in the West.
What are these six or seven hundred thousand women doing? Probably one hun- dred and fifty thousand of them are domestic servants. They are taking care of our homes at the greatest possible expenditure of resources, in the greatest possible extrava- gance. In the three hundred thousand homes of Chicago it would be hard to find a scientific domestic department. Domestic science is scarcely germinated. Here is an army of at least one hundred thousand women representing unskilled labor; worse than a devastating army of soldiers destroying health, life and property.
Here is a problem for Chicago women, a real home mission. I am glad to say that the Columbian Association of Housekeepers has made a beginning, but it deserves more encouragement from women than it has yet received. The truth is American people do not know how miserably and extravagantly they are fed and lioused. Cooks and housekeepers need training schools just as much as nurses need them. Good as our nursing schools are, they are defective in one great essential, viz., economy. It is almost impossible for people of moderate means to satisfy the many demands of a trained nurse. Our people have yet to learn that economy is a great fundamental prin- ciple of universal application-the exact adjustment of means to an end, and not something to be practiced merely when people are poor. It is the great and almost only preventive of poverty.
We do not think seriously enough of this alien population, which forms an integ- ral part of our households. These girls come to us young, their characters unformed. They represent, sooner or later, a hundred thousand homes, each with its children, the future citizens, good or bad, of Chicago. What are we doing for them? Literally noth- ing. Why should we be puffed up with vain glory, our heads in the clouds, when this great population of wasteful, unskilled labor stands upon our thresholds? Let no Chi- cago woman boast of her sex until her sex has grappled with and solved the problem of problems-household economics -- the one department which undisputably belongs to woman. One is positively filled with despair to think of the amount of hot bread and greasy pie daily consumed in Chicago. Still we have the face to raise money and send missionaries to the heathen; the mote in our brother's eye is such an irresistible and universal temptation.
It is estimated there are about five thousand day laborers among the women of Chicago who earn upon an average about six dollars a week. They work in all sorts of factories, the manufacture of liquor being about the only industry in which they are not engaged. This group of women is still more isolated and alien than the domestic group. They almost never come in contact with women who have greater opportunities. Yet if you were to know them intimately and analyze their aspirations you would find that their standard of getting on in the world is a purely material one, just like ours; a finer house, more clothes, more jewelry, especially more jewelry. It has always been a mystery to me why people as they acquire money begin to hang out signs.
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They soon move from one street to another, or, as in Chicago, from one side of the river to another-for what? That their old neighbors may be envious of them and their new neighbors visit them and estimate the cost of their furniture and food. We set the example and the women we are pleased to call beneath us follow hard after. The pinchbeck jewelry and the gaudy plush furniture are pitiful, but they are all potent indices of the actuating motive. If we do not see to it carefully the advent of this great Columbian Exposition will simply accentuate this monstrous error of life. The real, the artistic will be crowded out of its influence upon the masses, and the greed of gain will be the only survival. For it must be remembered the fittest to sur- vive is not always the best, but too frequently merely the strongest. Have we, as individuals, or have our boasted great and influential clubs anything to give to these women in domestic and factory life? They do not need charity, they are self-sup- porting. Do they need us? Do we need them? Are there no reciprocities which have gone unrecognized while we are searching for causes to espouse and missions to support? As to how these factory women are doing their daily work we have little information, they stand or fall with the market. They must do mechanically well or they would not be employed. Is it possible that a knowledge of the ideal can be breathed into the life of the factory girl, that she can put a soul into the tobacco leaf or the tin can? Is the work of the Chicago woman complete while the domestic or the factory girl, or she herself, spends her money for that which is not bread?
We have also a great army of women teachers, more than three thousand strong, to say nothing of the private schools. Our pride was a trifle wounded when a visitor told us the truth about our boasted public schools. How perfectly absurd to under- take the education of the masses with educators who are grossly illiterate. And how much more absurd, even criminal, it is to try to destroy the only institution in our midst that recognizes pedagogics as a science-the Cook County Normal School. How much do we know or care about the quality of mind that is molding the minds of the children of the city? All talk of education is as sounding brass when primary education is neglected. Primary! it is well named, in that the first is the greatest. In our present system the accomplishment of adult life is left unaccomplished in trying to unlearn things which never should have been taught. A great professor is called to teach our young men and women, but anybody may teach the children. Let the child have the great, yes, the greatest professor. The young man and woman can teach themselves; if their infancy has been directed they know what they need and how to get it. What are the women of Chicago doing for the public schools of Chi- cago? Do we not feel that our school work is finished since we have helped to place two women on our school board, and-left them to their fate?
After the domestics, the factory women and the teachers, come the comparatively few professional women. They compare favorably with the average, some of them above the average professional standard, but none of them can be said to be great. I
know of no woman who has made any new contribution to science, art or literature. I am fully aware that the great men of the carth are few and far, and that this is an age of greatness in masses rather than in individuals. Mediocrity is the genius of modern times. Still we should welcome a great book, a great picture, a great scientific discovery with unfeigned delight, especially if made by a woman, and a Chicago woman. May the time draw near.
We have a fair share of society leaders, and these have been compared to the women of the French salon-possibly the women of the salon have been over-esti- mated. Be that as it may, our type is very different, as it should be The environ- ment is totally different. Commercialism does not develop socially brilliant men. The yardstick and the steelyards are not at home with the lace handkerchief and the fan. The socially brilliant women of all ages have developed in the same atmosphere that develops socially brilliant men, from the age of Aspasia to that of the Hotel Rambouillet. A woman can not will to be brilliant and straightway shine. She must have an atmosphere and perspective. Her relations in time and space must be cor-
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rect, and these things are not of her own volition. The whole thing is more or less traditional, and far better is it for the American woman when she elects to ignore the traditions which, however she may try, she can not counterfeit, and be that to which she was born, the uncrowned queen of the people.
Beside all the women described there are several hundred thousand to be accounted for. A little girl whose schoolmates were telling what great avocations in life they intended to follow, declared that she intended to be a plain, married woman. The plain married women must ever constitute the great majority of any population, and it is right that it should be so. But of all the women we have named these home women are of the greatest importance. What they are thinking and doing is the thinking and doing of the city or the nation; this is true of any country, especially is it true of a republic. A lady in describing how she spent her time said: when she was not rowing with the servants, or ill in bed, she was doing fancy work. I should be sorry to believe that this described many, and yet so true an observer as Howells speaks of the prevalence of the women " in a permanent state of disrepair." Let us hope these are few in Chicago. These so-called home women have the greatest influence and they should be able to use it intelligently. Everybody bewails the cor- ruption of the state. Politics are a by-word. Now, if these home women cared very much for the state, if they could be taught the love of country, as the mothers of the revolution learned it, do you not think it would be improving to the politicians? We often hear of the phenomenon of double consciousness; it is an important question; but a double conscience is of far greater importance. It is quite the fashion now to have two consciences, one for private the other for public use. Now this divorce between the individual and the social conscience is the most dangerous evil of modern times; doubly dangerous because it is not recognized as an evil. If a man says, " that's business," or "that's politics," no other explanation is deemed necessary for any advantage he may take of his neighbor, or of a public trust. I was once asked by an anti-emigrationist what I thought to be the great evil with which we had to contend, if it were not the great influx of ignorant foreigners? I replied, the double standard of conscience among our own people. It is like our double stand- ard of virtue. I am well aware that the relation between the intrinsic value of a thing and its market value is very elusive, but I am equally well aware that there is such a thing as selling an article for far more than it is worth, and no one knows it so thor- oughly as the seller. The power to find the fine point of discrimination between this and stealing is left out of my moral sense. It was my fortune to know very well some of the so-called "boodlers" of this county, being officially associated with them in my hospital work. There could not be found a better illustration of what I mean by double conscience-the divorce between private and public moral judgment. Some of those men are truly excellent in private life. They would have scorned either to lie or to steal from a neighbor, and yet?
But what has this to do with Chicago women? Very much. Women, especially home women, the class composing the great multitude, have much to do with this matter. The truth is, the ordinary town girl in marrying prefers a smart trickster to a plain everyday man, because the former can put on style, and that to her is price- less above rubies, and he knows it. To the heart of the ordinary city woman it is so much better to live in a fashionable hotel or boarding house, wear showy clothes and drive on the avenues than it is to go into modest quarters and honestly help an honest man to make an honest living. They frankly tell you that they marry to be taken care of, to be supported, and they do not propose to help support any man. That they fail of their object in the majority of cases does not prevent the procession from recruiting its ranks every year. It is the appearance, not the reality; the shadow instead of the substance, that all these people are striving for, and these shadows are so costly, con- science, comfort, even life itself are thrown into the scale to outweight a mockery. Shakespere told it all as it never could be told again in Wolsey's lament.
When wives can say to their husbands, I do not want ease and luxury, fine homes
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and fine clothes at the cost of your very soul; you must not take public office at the price of your honor! do you not believe the reign of the single conscience might be inaugurated?
Some one in trying to criticize " The Angelus," called it the apotheosis of pota- toes. This is just the need of the world and the especial need of Chicago, the idealization of the humblest things in life. And who is to do it if our women fail? Now more than ever, with this great material wave forcing itself upon us, do we need the apotheosis of quiet, homely, honest life, " far from the garish day." Not for one moment must anyone infer that all Chicago homes are artificial and superficial. It is only that the artificial are so much more in evidence than the genuine.
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