"But it does seem clear," she went on briskly, "that much mischief has followed from too much father. He did put himself forward sol He thought he was the whole thing, and mother- hood— Motherhood!—was quite a subordinate process."
I always squirmed a little, in the back of my mind, at this atti- tude. All their tender reverence for fatherhood didn't seem in the least to make up for their absolutely unconscious pride in motherhood. Perhaps they were right——
"The dominance of him!" she went on. "The egoism of him! 'My name!' —and not letting her have any. 'My house—my line—my family'—if she had to be mentioned it was on 'the spindle side,' and when he is annoyed with her —what's that man in Cymbeline, Mr. Posthumous, wishing there was some way to have children without these women! It is funny, now,
isn't it, Van ?"
"It certainly is. Man or not, I can face facts when I see them. It is only too plain that 'Mr. Father' has grossly overestimated his importance in the part."
"Don't you think the American husband and father is a slight improvement on the earlier kind ?" I modestly inquired. At which she turned upon me with swift caresses, and delighted agreement.
"That's the beauty and the wonder of your country, Van! You are growing swiftly and splendidly in spite of yourselves. This great thing you started so valiantly is sweeping you along with it, educating and developing as it goes. Your men are better, your women are freer, your children have more chance to grow than anywhere on earth."
"That's good to hear, my dear," I said with a sigh of relief. "Then why so gloomy about us?"
"Suppose everybody was entitled to a yearly income of five thousand dollars. Suppose most people averaged about five cents. Suppose a specially able, vigorous and well placed group had worked it up to $50. * * * Why, Van—your superiority to less fortunate peoples is not worth mentioning compared to your inferiority to what you ought to be."
"Now we are coming to it," I sighed resignedly. "Pitch in, dear—give it to us—only be sure and show the way to help it.
She nodded grimly. "I will do both as well as I can. Let us take physical conditions first: With your numbers, your intelli- gence and mechanical ingenuity, your limitless materials, the United States should by now have the best roads on earth. This would be an immediate and progressive economic advantage, and would incidentally go far to solve other 'problems,' as you call your neglected work, such as 'unemployment,' 'the negro question,' 'criminality,' 'social discontent.' That there are not good roads in Central Africa does not surprise nor annoy me. That they are lacking in the United States is—discreditable !"
"Granted!" said I hastily. "Granted absolutely—you needn't stop on that point."
"That's only one thing," she went on serenely. "Here you are, a democracy— free—the power in the hands of the people. You let that group of conservatives saddle you with a constitution which has so interfered with free action that you've forgotten you had it. In this ridiculous helplessness—like poor old Gulliv- er— bound by the Lilliputians—you have sat open-eyed, not moving a finger, and allowed individuals—mere private per- sons —to help themselves to the biggest, richest, best things in the country. You know what is thought of a housekeeper who lets dishonest servants run the house with waste and robbery, or of a King who is openly preyed upon by extortionate para- sites—what can we think of a Democracy, a huge, strong, young Democracy, allowing itself to become infested with such parasites as these? Talk of bloodsuckers ! You have your oil- suckers and coal-suckers, water-suckers and woodsuckers, railroad-suckers and farm-suckers—this splendid young coun- try is crawling with them—and has not the intelligence, the en- ergy, to shake them off."
"But most of us do not believe in Socialism, you see," I protested.
"You believe in it altogether too much," she replied flatly. "You seem to think that every step toward decent economic health and development has been appropriated by Socialism, and that you cannot do one thing toward economic freedom and progress unless you become Socialists!"
There was something in this.
"I admit the Socialists are partly to blame for this," she went on, "with their insistent claims, but do you think it is any ex- cuse for a great people to say: 'Wc have all believed this ab- surd thing because they told us so ?' "
"Was it our—stupidity—that shocked you so at first ?" I ventured.
'She flashed a bright look at me. "How brilliant of you, Van! That was exactly it, and I hated to say so to you. How can you, for instance, let that little bunch of men 'own' all your anthra- cite coal, and make you pay what they choose for it? You, who wouldn't pay England a little tax on tea! It puzzled me beyond words at first. Such intelligence! Such' power! Such pride! Such freedom! Such good will! And yet such Abyssmal Idiocy! That's what brought me around to the home, you see."
"We've wandered a long way from it, haven't we ?" "No—that's just the point. You should have, but you haven't.
Don't you see? All these changes which are so glaringly necessary and so patently easy to make, require this one abil- ity—to think in terms of the community* * * you only think in terms of the family. Here are men engaged in some absolutely social enterprise, like the railroad business, in huge groups, most intricately co-ordinated. And from the dividend-suckers to the road-builders, every man thinks only of his Pay,—of what he is to get out of it. 'What is a railroad ?' you might ask them all. 'An investment,' says the dividendsucker. 'A means of spec- ulation,' says the Sucker-at-Large. 'A paying business," says the Corporate-Owner. 'A thing that pays salaries,' says the of- ficer. 'A thing that furnishes jobs,' says the digger and builder."
"But what has all this to do with the Home?"
"It has this to do with it," she answered, slowly and sadly. "Your children grow up in charge of home-bound mothers who recognize no interest, ambition, or duty outside the home—ex- cept to get to heaven if they can. These home-bound women are man-suckers; all they get he must give them, and they want a good deal. So he says: 'The world is mine oyster,'—and sets his teeth in that. It is not only this relentless economic pres- sure, though. What underlies it and accounts for it all is the limitation of idea! You think Home, you talk Home, you work Home, where you should from earliest childhood be seeing life in terms of the community. * * * You could not get much fleet action from a flotilla of canoes—with every man's first duty to paddle his own, could you * * *"
"What do you want done?" I asked, after awhile.
"Definite training in democratic thought, feeling and action, from infancy. An economic administration of common re- sources under which the home would cease to be a burden and become an unconscious source of happiness and comfort. And, of course, the socialization of home industry."
Chapter 8
More Diagnosis
OUR study of American problems went on now with persist- ence. Ellador was as busy, as patient, as inexorably efficient as an eminent surgeon engaged in a first-class operation. We studied together, she wrote carefully, from time to time, and read me the results—or part of them. And we talked at all hours, not only between ourselves, but with many other per- sons, of all kinds and classes.
"I've seen the ruined lands that were once so rich," she said one day, "and the crowded lands now being drained by a too thick population. (Those blind mothers! Can't they once think of what is going to happen to their children ?)
"But here I see land in plenty, carelessly skimmed and left, or not even skimmed, just lying open to the sun, while your squeezed millions smother in the cities.
"You are used to it, to you it is merely a fact—accepted without question. To an outsider, it seems as horribly strange as to see a people living in cellars thick and crawling, while great airy homes stand empty above.
"My study is mainly to get at your state of mind, to under- stand, if possible, what mysterious ideas and convictions keep you so poor, so dirty, so crowded, so starved, so ill-clothed, so unhealthy, so unhappy, when there is no need of it."
"Now look here, Ellador! That's rather s'trong, isn't it? You surely don't describe the American people that way."
Then she produced another of those little groups of assorted statistics she was so fond of. She gave the full wealth of the country—as at present administered, and showed that it ought to give nearly $2,000 to each of us. "That is per capita, you see, Van, not per family. For a family of five, that would be nine or ten thousand—not a bad nest egg, besides what they earn."
Then she showed me the estimate made by our latest sci- entific commission of inquiry, that "fully one-half of our wage earners do not receive incomes sufficient to maintain healthful conditions of living." A World Almanac was at hand, and she pointed out on page 228 the summary of manufactures.
"Here you have enough to show how people live in this splen- did country, Van. See here—'Average number of wage earners 6,615,046. Wages, $3,427,038,000'—which, being divided, gives to each $518 plus—less than $520 a year, Van. Less than $10 a week—to keep a family—average family, five; $104 a year, $2 a week apiece fdr Americans to live on. And you know what food and rent costs. Of course they are not healthy—how could they be?"
I looked at the figures, uncomfortably. She gave me a few more.
"Salaried employes average $1,187 plus—that's a bit more than twice as much. About $4.40 a week, apiece, for Americans to live on."
"How much do you want them to have?" I asked a little irrit- ably; but she was sweetly patient, inquiring, "How much would you be willing to live on—or how little, rather? I don't mean luxuries; I mean a decent, healthy life. Think you could do it on $4.40? Think you could do it on less than $6 say? Rent, board, clothing, car fares?"
Now I had spent a few months during my youth, living on a modest salary of $10 a week, and remembered it as a period of hardship and deprivation. There was $6 a week for board, 60 cents for carfare, 90 cents for my modest 15-cent lunches, 70 cents for tobacco—it left $1.80 for clothing and amusements, if any. I had thought it hard enough at that time to endure life on $10 a week for one. It had never occurred to me that the work- ing man had to keep five on it. And here were six million of them who did, it appeared, and a lot of clerks who were only twice as well off.
"Ten dollars a week, for each person is little enough for de- cent living in this country, isn't it, Van ? That would call for $50 a week for a family of five —$2,600 a year."
"But, my dear girl, the business would not stand it! You ask impossibilities!" I protested. She turned to her figures again.
"Here is the 'value added by manufacture!" she said. "That must be what these workers produce, isn't it? $8,530,261,000. Now we'll take out these wages—it leaves $5,103,223,000. Then we'll take out the salaries, that leaves $4,031,649,000. Where does that go? Here is a four-billion dollar item —for ser- vices—whose?
"It must be those "proprietors and firm members—only 273,265 of them— let's see, out of that four billion they get nearly $16,000 a year each. Don't you think it is a little—re- markable, Van? These services are valued at fourteen times as much as those of the salaries of employes and thirty times as much as the workers?"
"My dear girl," I said, "You have the most wonderful mind I ever lived with—ever met. And you know more than I do about ever so many things. But you haven't touched economics yet? There are laws here which you take no notice of."
And I told her of the iron law of wages, the law of supply and demand, and others. She listened, giving careful attention.
"You call them 'laws,'" she said, presently, "are they laws of nature?"
"Why, yes," I agreed slowly, "of human nature acting under economic conditions."
"Surely the economic conditions are those of soil, climate, materials available, the amount and quality of strength, intelli- gence, scientific and mechanical development."
"Why, of course; but also there are these I have mentioned." "Do you mean to tell me that it is a 'law of nature' for men to arrange their working and paying so that half the people shall be unhealthy? Do you really believe for a minute that this has to be so? "
But I was not prepared to repudiate all my education in eco- nomics at once, and doggedly pointed out, "It is a law of human nature."
Then she smiled at me with cheerful derision. I am glad to say that Ellador had risen above the extreme horror and pain of her first year among us, and was able to smile at what used to bring distress.
"It must be male human nature," quoth she, "we have no such 'law' in Herland."
"But you are all sisters," I said rather lamely. "Well, you are all sisters and brothers—aren't you? Of course, Van, I know the difference. You have had your long history of quarrels and hatred, of inimical strange races, of conquest and slavery. It looks to me as if the contempt of the rich for the poor was a lin- eal descendant of that of the conqueror for the vanquished. A helpless enemy, a slave, a serf, an employe, and the state of mind coming along unchanged. But the funny part of it is that in this blessed land, with more general good will and intelli- gence than I have found anywhere, you should have allowed this old foolishness to hang on so long.
"Now, Van, dear, don't you see how foolish it is? This is a democracy. To be efficient, that demands a competent elector- ate, doesn't it?"
"Why, we know that," I answered, with some heat. "Those forefathers of ours that you so scoff at knew that much. That's why we have our great system of free public education—from kindergarten to college."
