Читать книгу The College, the Market, and the Court or, Woman's relation to education, labor and law - Caroline Wells Healey Dall - Страница 3

Table of Contents

TO BE READ AFTER THE BOOK.

When, some years ago, I delivered nine lectures upon the Condition of Woman, I had no intention of printing them until time had matured my judgments and justified my conclusions. Peculiar circumstances afterwards induced me to modify this decision. The first course of lectures, now printed as "The College," had proved unexpectedly popular, and was many times repeated. At its close, I announced the second course upon Labor, involving the subject of Prostitution as the result of Low Wages; and a very unexpected opposition ensued. My files can still show the large number of letters I received, beseeching me not to touch this subject; and private intercession followed, on the part of those I hold wisest and most dear, to the same effect. Why I did not yield to all the clamor, I cannot tell,—except that I was not working for myself nor of myself.

I thought it, however, necessary to take unusual precautions to prevent these lectures from being misunderstood. I wrote private notes, enclosing tickets, to almost all the leading clergymen, asking that they would attend them as a personal favor to myself. I believe I did not allude to the efforts which had been made to silence me, except when I wrote to those who had joined in the outcry. In that case, I demanded the attendance as an act of justice. These notes were kindly responded to; and grateful tears started to my eyes, when I found on the seats before me white-haired men, who set aside their prejudices for my sake. Whatever might have been thought before, the delivery of the lectures silenced all objections. They were fully attended and frequently repeated; and I followed the delivery by the printing of this particular course, in order that misunderstandings should not have time to establish themselves. The book was well received, both at home and abroad. Letters came to me from the far shores of India and Africa, thanking me for its publication. The first edition was sold at once; and I should have reprinted the book, but that I did not wish to re-issue these lectures in an isolated form. I wanted them reprinted, if at all, in their proper place, subordinated to my main thought.

I smile a little as I look back. The remonstrances upon my file, dated less than ten years ago, would now be earnestly repudiated by the dear friends who wrote them.

After the delivery of the third course, upon Law, local reasons decided the publication of that book. Many efforts were being made in the different States to change laws; and it was thought that the lectures would give necessary information.

Of the first course, nothing has ever been printed in this country. The second lecture was printed, by a sympathizing friend in England, as a tract, and widely circulated. Part of it was reprinted with approbation in the "Englishwoman's Journal." The whole of this course is now given to American readers in its proper connection, in which it is hoped, that its bearing upon the later lectures will be seen, and a new significance given to its suggestions. The history of these volumes seems to make it necessary to reprint the original Prefaces in connection with the lectures on Labor and Law.

In 1856, I conceived the thought of twelve lectures, to be written concerning Woman; to embrace, in four series of three each, all that I felt moved to say in relation to her interests. No one knew better than myself that they would be only "twelve baskets of fragments gathered up;" but I could not distrust the Divine Love which still feeds the multitudes, who wander in the desert, with "five loaves and two small fishes."

In the first three of these lectures, I stated woman's claim to a civil position, and asked that power should be given her, under a professedly republican government, to protect herself. In them I thus stated the argument on which I should proceed: "The right to education—that is, the right to the education or drawing-out of all the faculties God has given—involves the right to a choice of vocation; that is, the right to a choice of the end to which those faculties shall be trained. The choice of vocation necessarily involves the protection of that vocation,—the right to decide how far legislative action shall control it; in one word, the right to the elective franchise."

Proceeding upon this formula, I delivered, in 1858, a course of lectures stating "Woman's Claim to Education;" and this season I have condensed my thoughts upon the freedom of vocations into the three following lectures. There are still to be completed three lectures on "Woman's Civil Disabilities." I should prefer to unite the twelve lectures in a single publication; but reasons of imperative force have induced me to hurry the printing of these "Essays on Labor." Neither Education nor Civil Disability can dispute the public interest with this subject. No one can know better than myself upon what wide information, what thorough mental discipline, all considerations in regard to it should be based. I have tried to keep my work within the compass of my ability, and, without seeking rigid exactness of detail, to apply common sense and right reason to problems which beset every woman's path. At the very threshold of my work, I confronted a painful task. Before I could press the necessity of exertion, before I could plead that labor might be honored in the public eye, I felt that I must show some cause for the terrible earnestness with which I was moved; and I could only do it by facing boldly the question of "Death or Dishonor?"

"Why not leave it to be understood?" some persons may object. "Why not leave such work to man?" the public may continue.

In answer to the first question, I would say, that very few women have much knowledge of this "perishing class," except those actually engaged in ministering to its despair; and that the information I have given is drawn from wholly reliable sources, as the reader may see, but can be obtained only by hours—nay, days and weeks—of painful and exhausting study. Very gladly have I saved my audience that necessity: greatly have I abbreviated whatever I have quoted. But I meant to drive home the reality of that wretchedness: I wanted the women to whom I spoke to feel for those "in bonds as bound with them;" and to understand, that to save their own children, male and female, they must be willing to save the children of others. It will be observed, that I have said very little in regard to this class in the city of Boston; very little, also, that was definite in regard to our slop-shops. The deficiency is intentional. I would not have one woman feel that I had betrayed her confidence, nor one employer that I had singled him out as a victim; and it is almost impossible to speak on such subjects without finding the application made to one's hand. I may say, in general, that a very wide local experience sustains the arguments which I have based on published statistics.

It was also my earnest desire to prepare one article on this subject that might be put into the hands of both sexes; that might be opened to the young, and read in the family circle, without thrilling the reader with any emotion less sacred than religious pity. This cannot be true of the reports of any Moral Reform Society; for in them it is needful to print details so gross in character as to be fit reading for none but well-principled persons of mature age. It is not true of such a work as Dr. Sanger's; for his historical retrospect furnishes every possible excuse to the vices of youth, and is open to question on every page.

From the highest sources in this community—from the lips of distinguished clergymen, scholars, and men of the world—I have had every private assurance, that, in this respect, I have not failed.

It would be unjust not to state, that two powerful causes co-operate, in the city of Boston, with low wages, to cause the ruin of women; I mean the love of dress, and a morbid disgust at labor.

The love of dress was a motive which obviously had no natural relation to my subject. A disinclination to work, my readers may think, it was proper I should have treated; but it is the natural reflection of a state of things, in the upper classes, which would be a much fitter subject of rebuke.

So long as a lady will allow her guest to stand exposed to snow and rain, rather than turn the handle of the door which she happens to be passing; so long as neither bread nor water can be passed at table, except at the omnipresent waiter's convenience,—servants will naturally think that there is something degrading and repulsive in work. This reform must begin in the higher classes.

But, if this subject must be treated at all, why should it not be left to men? Can women deal with it abstractly and fairly? The answer is simple. In physics, no scientific observations are reliable, so long as they proceed from one quarter alone; many observers must report, and their observations must be compared, before we can have a trustworthy result. So it is in social science. Men have been dealing with this great evil, unassisted, for thousands of years. By their own confession, it is as unapproachable and obstinate as ever. Conquered by its perpetual re-appearance, they have come to treat it as an "institution" to be "managed;" not an evil to be abolished, or a blasphemy to be hushed. But these lectures are not written for atheists. The speculative sceptic has retreated before the broad sunlight of modern civilization: only two classes of atheists remain,—men of science, who fancy that they have lost sight of the Creator in his works, and talk of the human soul as the most noble result of material forces; and people of fashion, who live "without God in the world." Why man should ever investigate the material universe without a tender and reverent, nay, a growing dependence on "the dear heart of God," we will not pause to inquire. The child does not let go his father's hand when he first comprehends the abundance of his resources. Neither the fountains of God's beauty, nor the perplexities of his nicely ordered law, loosen man's loving grasp. He clings all the closer in his joy, because he knows Him better. But why should not the denizens of the fashionable world be atheists? When I go among them, and listen to their heartless fooleries; when I see them absorbed by the vain nothings of their coterie, rapt in endless consultations about times and seasons, devoid of any real enjoyment, hopeless of noble occupation, with the days all empty and the nights all dark,—then I, too, shiver with doubt, and am ready to say in my heart, "There is no God." We can never believe in any spiritual reality of which our own souls do not receive some faint reflex. These people must do the will of the Father, before they can believe in his love. I do not write for them, but for thoughtful men and women, who rejoice in God's presence, deny the permanence of evil institutions, and are anxious to share with others the inheritance that belongs to the "child of the kingdom,"—for those who have faith to remove mountains, and courage to confess the faith. For them I shall not have spoken too plainly.

Shortly after these essays were written,—in June, 1859,—I received from London Mrs. Jameson's "Letter to Lord John Russell;" and I cannot refrain from expressing the deep emotion with which I read what she had written to him upon the same subject. Well may she wear the silver hairs of her sixty years like a crown, if, only through their sanction, she may speak such noble words. But—

"Earnest purposes do age us fast;"

and many a true-hearted woman, far younger in years, would gladly bear witness with her.

I would not write, if I could, an "exhaustive" treatise. All I ask for my work is, that it should be "suggestive." With that purpose, I have worked out my schemes, in the last lecture, far enough to provoke objection, to stimulate the spirit of adventure, to show how easily the "work" may wait upon the "will." May the "Opening of the Gates" be near at hand!

It remains only to acknowledge my indebtedness to some English and American friends: and first to the "Englishwoman's Journal;" not merely for its own excellent articles, but for references and suggestions, most valuable when followed out. The story of the young straw-braider was drawn from its pages; and, disappointed in the arrival of original material from Paris, long expected, I have been compelled to depend upon it largely for my sketch of Félicie de Fauveau. To one of its editors, Miss B.R. Parkes, and to Madame Bodichon in London, as well as to the Rev. Mr. Higginson, I am under pleasant private obligations. I must rest content to seem largely indebted to the "Edinburgh Review," of April 1859, for condensing the results of the census. My materials were collected and arranged, when the article on "Female Industry" reached me; and the differences in treatment were so few, that I at once drew my pen through whatever was not sanctioned by its authority. The ladies who first directed my attention to the Waltham watch-factory, and to the inventors of artificial marble in France, will see from these few words that I am not forgetful.

Boston, November, 1859.

There seems, at first sight, a certain presumption in offering to an American public, at this moment, any book which does not treat of the great interests which convulse and perplex the United States. But experience has shown, that neither the individual nor the national mind can remain continually upon the rack; and both author and publisher have thought that a book upon a serious subject, popular in form and low in price, would find perhaps a more hearty welcome, under present circumstances, than in those prosperous days, when romances and poems, travels and biographies, were scattered over every table by the score.

"Woman's Right to Labor" owed its warm welcome, not to any power or skill in its author, but to the impatient interest of philanthropists in every thing relating to that subject. It remains to be seen, whether as large a portion of the public and the press are prepared to treat with candid consideration the subject of Law.

Both these volumes have been given to the world in their detached form, that they might receive the benefit of general criticism; that errors, inaccuracies, or misapprehensions, might be perceived and rectified before they took a permanent position as part of a larger work. All criticism, therefore, which is honestly intended, will be received with patience and gratitude; but a great deal falls to the lot of the author which cannot come under this head.

If we are told that a "wider acquaintance with the history" of a certain era will modify our views, it is natural to expect that an honest critic will show where the acquaintance fails, and how the views should be modified. When we are told that certain scientific illustrations, "though true in the main, are not accurate in detail," we may reasonably hope to see at least one error pointed out. When neither of these things is done, we sweep such remarks aside, as alike unprofitable to us and our readers.

A wide and generous sympathy in my aims has given me, thus far, all that I could desire of encouragement and appreciation; and this appreciation has come, in several instances, from a "household of faith" far removed from my own, and has been mingled in such cases with an outspoken regret, that one who "wrote so well, and felt so warmly," should not acknowledge on her pages the debt woman owes to Christianity, and unfurl an evangelical banner above a Christ-like work. Because such friends have spoken tenderly, I answer them respectfully; because I never saw any church-door so narrow that I could not pass through it, nor so wide that it would open to all God's glory, I answer them without fear.

And, first, I believe in God, as the tender Father of all; as one who cares for the least of his children, and does not turn from the greatest; as one whose eye marks the smallest inequalities of happiness or condition, and holds them in a memory which does not fail. I believe in Christ as his authorized Teacher, anointed to reveal the fulness of God's love through his own life of practical good-will. I do not expect him to be superseded or set aside; and I do expect, that in proportion as men grow wiser, humbler, and sweeter, their eyes will open only the more widely to the great miracle of his spotless life, to the heavenly nature of his so simple teachings. And, next, I believe in my own work,—the elevation of woman through education, which is development; through labor, which is salvation; through legal rights, which are only freedom to develop and save,—as part of the mission of Jesus on the earth, authorized by him, inspired of God, and sure of fulfilment as any portion of his law. If at any time I have lost sight of this in expression, it is because I have thought it impossible that the purpose and character of my work should be mistaken. I am a slow and patient worker,—patient, because one may well be patient, if God can; and therefore no disappointment, no lack of appreciation, could sour or disturb me.

If I have justified the publication of this essay at the present moment, it may be thought that I shall not be able to justify the principal presumption; namely, that of a woman who undertakes to write upon law.

Such a treatise as this would be valueless, in my eyes, if it were written by a man. It is a woman's judgment in matters that concern women that the world demands, before any radical change can be made. To understand the laws under which I must live, no recondite learning, no broad scholarship, no professional study, can be fitly required. Common intelligence and common sense are all that society has any right to claim of me. Because most women shrink from criticising this law, I have criticised it.

Very recently, the "London Quarterly" said, in speaking of the republication of John Austin's work, that "English jurisprudence would be indebted for one of its highest aids to the reverential affection of a wife, and the patient industry of a refined and intelligent woman;" and Mrs. Austin defends her undertaking on this very ground,—that, if she had not superintended the work, no one else would. If John Austin's firm and penetrating intellect could not hold a score of persons about his lecturer's desk, and if it found its fit appreciation only in the grave, a conscientious woman need not shrink from any branch of his great subject, only because her audience will be small.

In one of his lectures upon Art, John Ruskin says:—

"Every leaf we have seen, connects its work with the entire and accumulated result of the work of its predecessors. Dying, it leaves its own small but well-labored thread; adding, if imperceptibly, yet essentially, to the strength, from root to crest, of the trunk on which it has lived, and fitting that trunk for better service to the next year's foliage."

Let these words, printed on my titlepage, show the modesty of my aim, and the conscientious steadfastness of my purpose. As the leaf is to the tree, so is the individual to society. Tear away a single leaf from the towering crest, and the trunk does not seem to suffer: nevertheless, one small thread withers, one channel dries up, one source of beauty and use fails; and, from that moment, a certain sidewise tendency marks the growth.

To compact carefully one "well-labored thread," is all that I have sought to do,—to write a little book, that women might be won to read, as conscientiously as if it were a heavy tome, to be endlessly consulted by the bench.

In writing these three lectures, I feel quite sure that I must have made use of many significant expressions borrowed from those who have broken the way for me. For many years an extemporaneous lecturer on this and kindred topics, I have so wrought certain modes of expression into the fabric of my thought, that I do not know where to put my quotation-marks. To Mrs. Hugo Reed, for instance, I know I must be under great obligations; and I can only hope, that she will trust me with her thoughts and words as generously as I desire to trust all my readers with mine. It is little matter who does the work, so that it be done; but I owe to one author, in particular, something like an explanation.

A few days before the third of these lectures was delivered in Boston (that is, before Jan. 23, 1861), a gentleman from Paris brought me from Madame d'Héricourt a book called "La Femme Affranchie," an answer to Michelet, Proudhon, Girardin, and Comte, which its author kindly desired I should translate for the American market. Unable to comply with her request, some weeks elapsed before I opened the book. I was struck with the energy, self-possession, and rapidity with which she seized the various points of the subject, with the thoroughness of her assault, and the temper of her argument. I did not sympathize in all her methods or conclusions; but I was interested to observe, that, in what I had then written and publicly spoken of the relations between suffrage and humanity, I had, in several instances, used her very words, or she had used mine. I did not alter my manuscript; but, with better times, we may hope for a translation of her spirited volumes, and the public will then do justice to her precedence.

I have been anxious to have positive proof of my conjecture in regard to the authorship of the "Lawe's Resolution of the Rights of Women;" but persevering endeavors in England, in several directions, have only left the matter as it stands in the text. It would be very interesting to know something of the private history of the man who wrote that book.

In the first of the following lectures, I have ventured a rhetorical allusion to the blue-laws of Connecticut. Since it went to press, I have seen it stated, on high authority, that any American writer who should "profess to believe in the existence of the blue-laws of New Haven would simply proclaim himself a dunce;" and the "Saturday Review" has been handled without gloves for taking this existence for granted.

I never supposed that the term "blue" applied to the color of the paper on which such laws were printed, any more than I supposed "blue Presbyterianism" referred to the color of the presbyters' gowns. I supposed it was the outgrowth of a popular sarcasm, descriptive, not of a "veritable code," nor of a "practical code unpublished," but of such portions of the general code as were repugnant to common sense, and the genial nature of man. This I still think will be found to be the case; and it is certainly to Connecticut divines and Connecticut newspapers that we owe the popular impression.

It was in the forty-sixth year of the independence of the United States that S. Andrus & Co., of Hartford, published a volume purporting to be a compendium of early judicial proceedings in Connecticut, and especially of that portion of the proceedings of the Colony of New Haven commonly called the "blue-laws." Charles A. Ingersoll, Esq., testified to the correctness of these copies of the ancient record.

As I quote this title wholly from memory, I am unable to say whether the colony ever fined a bishop for kissing his own wife on Sunday; but I have read more than once of such fines; and, if no laws remain unrepealed on the Connecticut statute-book quite as absurd in their spirit and general tendency, there are many on those of Massachusetts and New Hampshire: so I shall let my rhetorical flourish stand.

To my English friends, to Mr. Herndon of Illinois, Mr. Higginson, and Samuel F. Haven, Esq., of Worcester, I owe my usual acknowledgments for books lent, and service proffered, with a generosity and graceful readiness cheering to remember.

Nor will I omit, in what may be a last opportunity, to bear faithful testimony to the assistance rendered, in all my studies of this sort, by my friend, Mr. John Patton, of Montreal. No single person has helped me so much, so wisely, or so well.

In order to secure technical accuracy, my manuscript and proofs have been subjected to the revision of my friend, the Hon. Samuel E. Sewall. The principal alteration which Mr. Sewall has made, has been the substitution of the word "suffrage" for that of "franchise;" which latter I used in the Continental fashion. I prefer it to "suffrage," because it seems to have a broader signification; but I yield it to his suggestion.

I would gladly have dedicated this volume to the memory of the late John W. Browne, whose pure purpose and eminent gifts made me rejoice, while he was living, to call him friend. As, however, he never read the whole of the manuscript, I have given it a dedication "to the friends of forsaken women," which no one, who knew him well, will fail to perceive includes him.

Boston, Sept. 1, 1861.

Caroline H. Dall

70, Warren Avenue, Boston, January, 1867.