Читать книгу The home: its work and influence - Gilman Charlotte Perkins - Страница 6

I. The Housewife

All industry began at home.

All industry was begun by women.

Back of history, at the bottom of civilisation, during that long period of slowly changing savagery which antedates our really human life, whatever work was done on earth was done by the woman in the home. From that time to this we have travelled far, spread wide, grown broad and high; and our line of progress is the line of industrial evolution.

Where the patient and laborious squaw once carried on her back the slaughtered game for her own family, now wind and steam and lightning distribute our provisions around the world. Where she once erected a rude shelter of boughs or hides for her own family, now mason and carpenter, steel and iron worker, joiner, lather, plasterer, glazier, plumber, locksmith, painter, and decorator combine to house the world. Where she chewed and scraped the hides, wove bark and grasses, made garments, made baskets, made pottery, made all that was made for her own family, save the weapons of slaughter, now the thousand manufactures of a million mills supply our complex needs and pleasures. Where she tamed and herded a few beasts for her own family, now from ranchman to packer move the innumerable flocks and herds of the great plains; where she ploughed with a stick and reaped with a knife, for her own family, now gathered miles of corn cross continent and ocean to feed all nations. Where she prepared the food and reared the child for her own family – what! Has the world stopped? Is history a dream? Is social progress mere imagination? —there she is yet! Back of history, at the bottom of civilisation, untouched by a thousand whirling centuries, the primitive woman, in the primitive home, still toils at her primitive tasks.

All industries began at home, there is no doubt of that. All other industries have left home long ago. Why have these stayed? All other industries have grown. Why have not these?

What conditions, social and economic, what shadowy survival of oldest superstitions, what iron weight of custom, law, religion, can be adduced in explanation of such a paradox as this? Talk of Siberian mammoths handed down in ice, like some crystallised fruit of earliest ages! What are they compared with this antediluvian relic! By what art, what charm, what miracle, has the twentieth century preserved alive the prehistoric squaw!

This is a phenomenon well worth our study, a subject teeming with interest, one that concerns every human being most closely – most vitally. Sociology is beginning to teach us something of the processes by which man has moved up and on to his present grade, and may move farther. Among those processes none is clearer, simpler, easier to understand, than industrial evolution. Its laws are identical with those of physical evolution, a progression from the less to the greater, from the simple to the complex, a constant adaptation of means to ends, a tendency to minimise effort and maximise efficiency. The solitary savage applies his personal energy to his personal needs. The social group applies its collective energy to its collective needs. The savage works by himself, for himself; the civilised man works in elaborate inter-dependence with many, for many. By the division of labour and its increasing specialisation we vastly multiply skill and power; by the application of machinery we multiply the output; by the development of business methods we reduce expense and increase results; the whole line of growth is the same as that which makes a man more efficient in action than his weight in shell-fish. He is more highly organised and specialised. So is modern industry.