 Part 11. Marriage and Love from Anarchism and Other Essays. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman. Marriage and Love. The popular notion about marriage and love is that they are synonymous, that they spring from the same motives and cover the same human needs. Like most popular notions, this also rests not on actual facts, but on superstition. Marriage and love have nothing in common. They are as far apart as the poles, are in fact antagonistic to each other. No doubt some marriages have been the result of love. Not, however, because love could assert itself only in marriage. Much rather is it because few people can completely outgrow a convention. There are today large numbers of men and women to whom marriage is not but a farce, but who submit to it for the sake of public opinion. At any rate, while it is true that some marriages are based on love, and while it is equally true that in some cases love continues in married life, I maintain that it does so regardless of marriage, and not because of it. On the other hand, it is utterly false that love results from marriage. On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable. Certainly the growing use to each other is far away from the spontaneity, the intensity and beauty of love without which the intimacy of marriage must prove degrading to both the woman and the man. Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact. It differs from the ordinary life insurance agreement only in that it is more binding, more exacting. Its returns are insignificantly small compared with the investments. In taking out an insurance policy one pays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue payments. If however woman's premium is her husband, she pays for it with her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life, until death doth part. Moreover, the marriage insurance condemns her to lifelong dependency, to parasitism, to complete uselessness, individual as well as social. Man too pays his toll, but as his sphere is wider, marriage does not limit him as much as woman. He feels his chains more in an economic sense. Thus Dante's motto over inferno applies with equal force to marriage. Ye who enter here leave all hope behind. That marriage is a failure, none but the very stupid will deny. One has but to glance over the statistics of divorce to realize how bitter a failure marriage really is. Nor will the stereotyped Philistine argument that the laxity of divorce laws and the growing looseness of woman account for the fact that first, every twelfth marriage ends in divorce. Second, that since 1870 divorces have increased from 28 to 73 for every 100,000 population. Third, that adultery since 1867 as ground for divorce has increased 270.8%. Fourth, that desertion increased 369.8%. Added to these startling figures is a vast amount of material, dramatic and literary, further elucidating this subject. Robert Herrick in Together, Paniero in Mid-Channel, Eugene Walder in Paid in Full and scores of other writers are discussing the barrenness, the monotony, the sordidness, the inadequacy of marriage as a factor for harmony and understanding. The thoughtful social student will not contend himself with the popular superficial excuse for this phenomenon. He will have to dig deeper into the very life of the sexes to know why marriage proves so disastrous. Edward Carpenter says that behind every marriage stands the lifelong environment of the two sexes, an environment so different from each other that man and woman must remain strangers. Separated by an insurmountable wall of superstition, custom and habit, marriage has not the potentiality of developing knowledge of and respect for each other without which every union is doomed to failure. Henrik Ibsen, the hater of all social shams, was probably the first to realize this great truth. Nora leaves her husband not as the stupid critic would have it because she is tired of her responsibilities or feels the need of woman's rights, but because she has come to know that for eight years she had lived with a stranger and born him children. Can there be anything more humiliating, more degrading than a lifelong proximity between two strangers? No need for the woman to know anything of the man's safest income. As to the knowledge of the woman, what is there to know except that she has a pleasing apparent? We have not yet outgrown the theologic myth that woman has no soul, that she is a mere appendix to man made out of his rib just for the convenience of the gentleman who was so strong that he was afraid of his own shadow. Perchance the poor quality of the material whence woman comes is responsible for her inferiority. At any rate, woman has no soul. What is there to know about her? Besides, the less soul a woman has, the greater her asset as a wife, the more readily will she absorb herself in her husband. It is this slavish acquiescence to man's superiority that has kept the marriage institution seemingly intact for so long a period. Now that woman is coming into her own, now that she is actually growing aware of herself as being outside of the master's grace, the sacred institution of marriage is gradually being undermined, and no amount of sentimental lamentation can stay it. From infancy almost, the average girl is told that marriage is her ultimate goal. Therefore her training and education must be directed towards that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter she is prepared for that. Yet strange to say, she is allowed to know much less about her function as wife and mother than the ordinary artisan of his trade. It is indecent and filthy for a respectable girl to know anything of the marital relation. Oh, for the inconsistency of respectability that needs the marriage vow to turn something which is filthy into the purest and most sacred arrangement that none dare question or criticize. Yet that is exactly the attitude of the average upholder of marriage. The prospective wife and mother is kept in complete ignorance of her only asset in the competitive field—sex. Thus she enters into lifelong relations with a man only to find herself shocked, repelled, outraged beyond measure by the most natural and healthy instinct—sex. It is safe to say that a large percentage of the unhappiness, misery, distress, and physical suffering of matrimony is due to the criminal ignorance in sex matters that is being extolled as a great virtue. Nor is it at all an exaggeration when I say that more than one home has been broken up because of this deplorable fact. If, however, woman is big and free enough to learn the mystery of sex without the sanction of state or church, she will stand condemned as utterly unfit to become the wife of a good man, his goodness consisting of an empty brain and plenty of money. Can there be anything more outrageous than the idea that a healthy grown woman full of life and passion must deny nature's demand, must subdue her most intense craving, undermine her health and break her spirit, must stunt her vision, abstain from the depth and glory of sex experience until a good man comes along to take her unto himself as a wife? That is precisely what marriage means. How can such an arrangement end except in failure? This is one, though not the least important factor of marriage which differentiates it from love. Ours is a practical age. The time when Romeo and Juliet risked the wrath of their fathers for love when Gretchen exposed herself to the gossip of her neighbors for love is no more. If, on rare occasions, young people allow themselves the luxury of romance, they are taken in care by the elders, drilled and pounded until they become sensible. The moral lesson instilled in the girl is not whether the man has aroused her love, but rather is it how much? The important and only God of practical American life. Can the man make a living? Can he support a wife? That is the only thing that justifies marriage. Gradually this saturates every thought of the girl. Her dreams are not of moonlight and kisses of laughter and tears. She dreams of shopping tours and bargain counters. This sole poverty and sordidness are the elements inherent in the marriage institution. The state and church approve of no other ideal simply because it is the one that necessitates the state and church control of men and women. Doubtless there are people who continue to consider love above dollars and cents. Particularly this is true of that class whom economic necessity has forced to become self-supporting. The tremendous change in women's position wrought by that mighty factor is indeed phenomenal when we reflect that it is but a short time since she has entered the industrial arena. Six million women wage workers. Six million women who have equal right with men. To be exploited, to be robbed, to go on strike, to starve even. Anything more, my lord? Yes, six million wage workers in every walk of life from the highest brain work to the mines and railroad tracks. Yes, even detectives and policemen. Surely the emancipation is complete. Yet with all that, but a very small number of the vast army of women wage workers look upon work as a permanent issue in the same light as does man. No matter how decrepit the latter, he has been taught to be independent, self-supporting. Oh, I know that no one is really independent in our economic treadmill. Still the poorest specimen of a man hates to be a parasite, to be known as such at any rate. The woman considers her position as worker transitory, to be thrown aside for the first bitter. That is why it is infinitely harder to organize women than men. Why should I join a union? I am going to get married, to have a home. Has she not been taught from infancy to look upon that as her ultimate calling? She learns soon enough that the home, though not so large a prison as the factory, has more solid doors and bars. It has a keeper so faithful that not can escape him. The most tragic part, however, is that the home no longer frees her from wage slavery. It only increases her task. According to the latest statistics submitted before a committee on labor and wages and congestion of population, 10% of the wage workers in New York City alone are married. Yet they must continue to work at the most poorly paid labor in the world. Add to this horrible aspect the drudgery of housework and what remains of the protection and glory of the home. As a matter of fact, even the middle class girl in marriage cannot speak of her home since it is the man who creates her sphere. It is not important whether the husband is a brute or a darling. What I wish to prove is that marriage guarantees woman a home only by the grace of her husband. There she moves about in his home year after year until her aspect of life and human affairs becomes as flat, narrow and drab as her surroundings. Small wonder if she becomes a nag, petty, quarrelsome, gossipy, unbearable, thus driving the man from the house. She could not go if she wanted to. There is no place to go. Besides a short period of married life of complete surrender of all faculties absolutely incapacitates the average woman for the outside world. She becomes reckless in appearance, clumsy in her movements, dependent in her decisions, cowardly in her judgment, a weight and a bore which most men grow to hate and despise. Wonderfully inspiring atmosphere for the bearing of life, is it not? But the child, how is it to be protected if not for marriage? After all, is not that the most important consideration? The sham, the hypocrisy of it. Marriage protecting the child, yet thousands of children destitute and homeless. Marriage protecting the child, yet orphan asylums and reformatories overcrowded, the society for the prevention of cruelty to children keeping busy and rescuing the little victims from loving parents to place them under more loving care, the Jerry Society. Oh, the mockery of it. Marriage may have the power to bring the horse to water, but has it ever made him drink? The law will place the father under arrest and put him in convicts clothes, but has that ever stilled the hunger of the child? If the parent has no work or if he hides his identity, what does marriage do then? It invokes the law to bring the man to justice, to put him safely behind closed doors. His labor, however, goes not to the child, but to the state. The child receives but a blighted memory of his father's stripes. As to the protection of the woman, therein lies the curse of marriage. Not that it really protects her, but the very idea is so revolting, such an outrage and insult on life, so degrading to human dignity as to forever condemn this parasitic institution. It is like that other paternal arrangement, capitalism. It robs man of his birthright, stunts his growth, poisons his body, keeps him in ignorance, in poverty and dependence, and then institutes charities that thrive on the last vestige of man's self-respect. The institution of marriage makes a parasite of woman, an absolute dependent. It incapacitates her for life's struggle, annihilates her social consciousness, paralyzes her imagination, and then imposes its gracious protection, which is in reality a snare, a travesty on human character. If motherhood is the highest fulfillment of woman's nature, what other protection does it need save love and freedom? Marriage but defiles, outrages, and corrupts her fulfillment. Does it not say to the woman, only when you follow me shall you bring forth life? Does it not condemn her to the block? Does it not degrade and shame her if she refuses to buy her right to motherhood by selling herself? Does not marriage only sanction motherhood, even though conceived in hatred and compulsion? Yet if motherhood be a free choice of love, of ecstasy, of defiant passion, does it not place a crown of thorns upon an innocent head, and carve in letters of blood the hideous epithet bastard? Were marriage to contain all the virtues claimed for it, its crimes against motherhood would exclude it forever from the realm of love. Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy. Love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions. Love, the freest, the most powerful molder of human destiny. How can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little state and church-begotten weed? Marriage. Free love? As if love is anything but free. Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hobble is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make a beggar of a king. Yes, love is free. It can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on this statutes, all the courts in the universe cannot tear it from the soil once love has taken root. If, however, the soil is sterile, how can marriage make it bear fruit? It is like the last desperate struggle of fleeting life against death. Love needs no protection. It is its own protection. So long as love begets life, no child is deserted or hungry or famished for the want of affection. I know this to be true. I know women who became mothers in freedom by the men they loved. Few children in wedlock enjoy the care, the protection, the devotion free motherhood is capable of bestowing. The defenders of authority dread the advent of a free motherhood, lest it will rob them of their prey. Who would fight wars? Who would create wealth? Who would make the policemen the jailer if women were to refuse the indiscriminate breeding of children? The race, the race, shouts the king, the president, the capitalist, the priest. The race must be preserved, though women be degraded to a mere machine. And the marriage institution is our only safety valve against the pernicious sex awakening of women. But in vain these frantic efforts to maintain a state of bondage. In vain, too, the edicts of the church, the mad attacks of rulers, in vain even the arm of the law. Woman no longer wants to be a party to the production of a race of sickly, feeble, decrepit, wretched human beings who have neither the strength nor moral courage to throw off the yoke of poverty and slavery. Instead she desires fewer and better children, begotten and reared in love and through free choice, not by compulsion as marriage imposes. Our pseudo-moralists have yet to learn the deep sense of responsibility toward the child that love and freedom has awakened in the breast of women. Rather would she forego forever the glory of motherhood than bring forth life in an atmosphere that breathes only destruction and death. And if she does become a mother, it is to give to the child the deepest and best her being can yield. To grow with the child is her motto. She knows that in that manner alone can she help build true manhood and womanhood. Ibsen must have had a vision of a free mother when, with a master stroke, he portrayed Mrs. Alving. She was the ideal mother because she had outgrown marriage in all the tours, because she had broken her chains and set her spirit free to soar until it returned to personality, regenerated and strong. Alas it was too late to rescue her life's joy her Oswald, but not too late to realize that love and freedom is the only condition of a beautiful life. Those who, like Mrs. Alving, have paid with blood and tears for their spiritual awakening, repudiate marriage as an imposition, a shallow, empty mockery. They know whether love lasts but one brief span of time or for eternity, it is the only creative, inspiring, elevating basis for a new race, a new world. In our present pygmy state, love is indeed a stranger to most people. Misunderstood and shunned, it rarely takes root, or if it does, it soon withers and dies. Its delicate fiber cannot endure the stress and strain of the daily grind. Its soul is too complex to adjust itself to the slimy wolf of our social fabric. It weeps and moans and suffers with those who have need of it, yet lack the capacity to rise to love summit. Someday, someday men and women will rise. They will reach the mountain peak. They will meet big and strong and free, ready to receive, to partake and to bask in the golden rays of love. What fancy, what imagination! What poetic genius can foresee even approximately the potentialities of such a force in the life of men and women? If the world is ever to give birth to true companionship and oneness, not marriage, but love will be the parent. End of Part 11 Section 1 of Chapter 12 of Anarchism and Other Essays The Modern Drama A Powerful Disseminator of Radical Thought So long as discontent and unrest make themselves but dumbly felt within a limited social class, the powers of reaction may often succeed in suppressing such manifestations. But when the dumb unrest grows into conscious expression and becomes almost universal, it necessarily affects all phases of human thought and action, and seeks its individual and social expression in the gradual transvaluation of existing values. An adequate appreciation of the tremendous spread of the modern conscious social unrest cannot be gained from merely propagandistic literature. Rather, must we become conversant with the larger phases of human expression manifest in art, literature, and above all the modern drama, the strongest and most far-reaching interpreter of our deep-felt dissatisfaction. What a tremendous factor for the awakening of conscious discontent are the simple canvases of a millet, the figures of his peasants, what terrible indictment against our social wrongs, wrongs that condemn the man with the hoe to hopeless drudgery himself excluded from nature's bounty. The vision of a murnier conceives the growing solidarity and defiance of labour in the group of miners carrying their maimed brother to safety. His genius thus powerfully portrays the interrelation of the seething unrest among those slaving in the bowels of the earth, and the spiritual revolt that seeks artistic expression. No less important is the factor for rebellious awakening in modern literature to Genev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Andreiyev, Gorky, Whitman, Emerson, and scores of others embodying the spirit of universal ferment and the longing for social change. Still more far-reaching is the modern drama, as the leaven of radical thought and the disseminator of new values. It might seem an exaggeration to ascribe to the modern drama such an important role, but a study of the development of modern ideas in most countries will prove that the drama has succeeded in driving home great social truths, truths generally ignored when presented in other forms. No doubt there are exceptions, as Russia and France. Russia, with its terrible political pressure, has made people think and has awakened their social sympathies because of the tremendous contrast which exists between the intellectual life of the people and the despotic regime that is trying to crush that life. Yet while the great dramatic works of Tolstoy, Chechov, Gorky, and Andreiyev closely mirror the life and the struggle, the hopes and aspirations of the Russian people, they did not influence radical thought to the extent the drama has done in other countries. Who can deny, however, the tremendous influence exerted by the power of darkness or night lodging? Tolstoy, the real true Christian, is yet the greatest enemy of organised Christianity. With a master hand he portrays the destructive effects upon the human mind of the power of darkness, the superstitions of the Christian church. What other medium could express, with such dramatic force, the responsibility of the church for crimes committed by its deluded victims? What other medium could in consequence rouse the indignation of man's conscience? Similarly direct and powerful is the indictment contained in Gorky's night lodging, the social pariahs forced into poverty and crime, yet desperately clutch at the last vestiges of hope and aspiration. Lost existences these, blighted and crushed by cruel and social environment. France, on the other hand, with her continuous struggle for liberty, is indeed the cradle of radical thought. As such she too did not need the drama as a means of awakening, and yet the works of Brier as Robe Rouge, portraying the terrible corruption of the judiciary, and Mirbeau's Les Affaires sont les affaires, picturing the destructive influence of wealth on the human soul, have undoubtedly reached wider circles than most of the articles and books which have been written in France on the social question. In countries like Germany, Scandinavia, England and even in America, the drama is the vehicle which is really making history, disseminating radical thought in ranks not otherwise to be reached. Let us take Germany for instance, for nearly a quarter of a century, men of brains, of ideas, and of the greatest integrity made it their life work to spread the truth of human brotherhood, of justice, among the oppressed and downtrodden. Socialism, that tremendous revolutionary wave, was to the victims of a merciless and inhumane system, like water to the parched lips of the desert traveller. Alas the cultured people remained absolutely indifferent. To them that revolutionary tide was but the murmur of dissatisfied, discontented men, dangerous, illiterate troublemakers, whose proper place was behind prison bars. Self-satisfied as the cultured, usually are, they could not understand why one should fuss about the fact that thousands of people were starving, though they contributed towards the wealth of the world. Surrounded by beauty and luxury, they could not believe that side by side with them lived human beings degraded to a position lower than a beast's, shelterless and ragged, without hope or ambition. This condition of affairs was particularly pronounced in Germany after the Franco-German War, full to the bursting point with its victory, Germany thrived on a sentimental patriotic literature, thereby poisoning the minds of the country's youth by the glory of conquest and bloodshed. Intellectual Germany had to take refuge in the literature of other countries, in the works of Ibsen, Zola, Dode, Mopassant, and especially in the great works of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Turgenev. But as no country can long maintain a standard of culture without a literature and drama related to its own soil, so Germany gradually began to develop a drama reflecting the life and the struggles of its own people. Arno Holtz, one of the youngest dramatists of that period, startled the Philistines out of their ease and comfort with his family as Zelika. The play deals with society's refuse, men and women of the alleys, whose only subsistence consists of what they can pick out of the garbage barrels. The gruesome subject is it not, and yet what other method is there to break through the hard shell of the minds and souls of people who have never known want, and who therefore assume that all is well in the world? Needless to say, the play aroused tremendous indignation. The truth is bitter, and the people living on the Fifth Avenue of Berlin hated to be confronted with the truth. Not that the family of Zelika represented anything that had not been written about for years without any seeming result, but the dramatic genius of Holtz, together with the powerful interpretation of the play, necessarily made inroads into the widest circles and forced people to think about the terrible inequalities around them. Zudermann's Erre and Heimat dealt with vital subjects. I have already referred to the sentimental patriotism so completely turning the head of the average German as to create a perverted conception of honour. Dueling became an everyday affair costing innumerable lives. A great cry was raised against the fad by a number of leading writers, but nothing acted as such a clarifier and exposure of that national disease as the Erre. Not that the play merely deals with Dueling, it analyses the real meaning of honour, proving that it is not a fixed inborn feeling, but that it varies with every people and every epoch, depending particularly on one's economic and social station in life. We realise from this play that the man in the brownstone mansion will necessarily define honour differently from his victims. The family Heinecke enjoys the charity of the millionaire Mühling, being permitted to occupy a dilapidated shanty on his premises in the absence of their son, Robert. The latter, as Mühling's representative, is making a vast fortune for his employer in India. On his return, Robert discovers that his sister had been seduced by young Mühling, whose father graciously offers to straighten matters with a check for forty thousand marks. Robert, outraged and indignant, resents the insult to his family's honour and is forthwith dismissed from his position for impudence. Robert finally throws this accusation into the face of the philanthropist millionaire. We slave for you, we sacrifice our heart's blood for you, while you seduce our daughters and sisters and kindly pay for their disgrace with the gold we have earned for you. That is what you call honour. An incidental sidelight upon the conception of honour is given by Count Trust, the principal character in the era, a man widely conversant with the customs of various climes, who relates that in his many travels he chanced across a savage tribe whose honour he mortally offended by refusing the hospitality which offered him the charms of the chieftain's wife. The theme of Heimat treats of the struggle between the old and the young generations. It holds a permanent and important place in dramatic literature. Magda, the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Schwarz, has committed an unpardonable sin. She refused the suitor selected by her father for daring to disobey the parental commands she is driven from home. Magda, full of life and the spirit of liberty, goes out into the world to return to her native town twelve years later, a celebrated singer. She consents to visit her parents on condition that they respect the privacy of her past. But her Martinette father immediately begins to question her, insisting on his paternal rights. Magda is indignant, but gradually his persistence brings to light the tragedy of her life. He learns that the respected Councillor von Kehler had in his student days been Magda's lover while she was battling for her economic and social independence. The consequence of the fleeting romance was a child, deserted by the man even before birth. The rigid military father of Magda demands as retribution from Councillor von Kehler that he legalise the love affair. In view of Magda's social and professional success, Kehler willingly consents, but on condition that she forsake the stage and place the child in an institution. The struggle between the old and the new culminates in Magda's defiant words of the woman grown to conscious independence of thought and action. I'll say what I think of you, of you and your respectable society. Why should I be worse than you that I must prolong my existence among you by lie? Why should this gold upon my body and the luster which surrounds my name only increase my infamy? Have I not worked early and late for ten long years? Have I not woven this dress with sleepless nights? Have I not built up my career step by step like thousands of my kind? Why should I blush before anyone? I am myself, and through myself I have become what I am. The general theme of Heimat was not original. It had been previously treated by a master hand in Fathers and Sons. Partly because Togenev's great work was typical rather of Russian than universal conditions, and still more because it was in the form of fiction, the influence of Fathers and Sons was limited to Russia. But Heimat, especially because of its dramatic expression, became almost a world factor. The dramatist who not only disseminated radicalism but literally revolutionised the thoughtful Germans is Gerhard Hauptmann. His first play for Sonnenaufgang, refused by every leading German theatre and first performed in a wretched little playhouse behind a beer garden, acted like a stroke of lightning, illuminating the entire social horizon. Its subject matter dealt with the life of an extensive landowner, ignorant, illiterate and brutalised, by his economic slaves of the same mental calibre. The influence of wealth both on the victims who created it and the possessor thereof is shown in the most vivid colours as resulting in drunkenness, idiocy and decay. But the most striking feature of Fort Sonnenaufgang, the one which brought a shower of abuse on Hauptmann's head, was the question as to the indiscriminate breeding of children by unfit parents. During the second performance of the play, a leading Berlin surgeon almost caused a panic in the theatre by swinging a pair of forceps over his head and screaming at the top of his voice, the decency and morality of Germany are at stake if childbirth is to be discussed openly from the stage. The surgeon is forgotten and Hauptmann stands a colossal figure before the world. When D. Weber first saw the light, pandemonium broke out in the land of thinkers and poets. What! cried the moralists, working men, dirty filthy slaves, to be put on the stage, poverty in all its horrors and ugliness to be dished out as an after-dinner amusement. That is too much! Indeed it was too much for the fat and greasy bourgeoisie to be brought face to face with the horrors of the weavers' existence. It was too much for the truth and reality that rang like thunder in the deaf ears of self-satisfied society. Jacques! Of course it was generally known even before the appearance of this drama that capital cannot get fat unless it devours labour, that wealth cannot be hoarded except through the channels of poverty, hunger and cold. But such things are better kept in the dark lest the victims awaken to a realisation of their position. But it is the purpose of the modern drama to rouse the consciousness of the oppressed. And that indeed was the purpose of Gerhard Hauptmann in depicting to the world the conditions of the weavers in Silesia, human beings working eighteen hours daily yet not earning enough for bread and fuel, human beings living in broken, wretched huts, half covered with snow, and nothing but tatters to protect them from the cold, infants covered with scurvy from hunger and exposure, pregnant women in the last stages of consumption, victims of a benevolent Christian era without life, without hope, without warmth. Ah yes, it was too much! Hauptmann's dramatic versatility deals with every stratum of social life. Besides portraying the grinding effect of economic conditions he also treats of the struggle of the individual for his mental and spiritual liberation from the slavery of convention and tradition. Thus Heinrich, the bellforger, in the dramatic prose poem Diversunken Gluche fails to reach the mountain peaks of liberty because, as Ratendulen said, he had lived in the valley too long. Similarly, Dr. Vokarath and Anna Mar remain lonely souls because they too lack the strength to defy venerated traditions. Yet their very failure must awaken the rebellious spirit against the world forever hindering individual and social emancipation. Max Halbers, Eugendt, and Vedikin Frühlings Ervaken are dramas which have disseminated radical thought in an altogether different direction. They treat of the child and the dense ignorance and narrow puritanism that meet the awakening of nature. Particularly this is true of Frühlings Ervaken. Young boys and girls sacrificed on the altar of false education and of our sickening morality that prohibits the enlightenment of youth as to question so imperative to the health and well-being of society the origin of life and its functions. It shows how a mother and a truly good mother at that keeps her fourteen-year-old daughter in absolute ignorance as to all matters of sex and when finally the young girl falls a victim to her own ignorance the same mother sees her daughter killed by quack medicines. The inscription on her grave states that she died of anemia and morality is satisfied. The fatality of our puritanic hypocrisy in these matters is especially illumined by Vedikins insofar as our most promising children fall victims to sex ignorance and the utter lack of appreciation on the part of the teachers of the child's awakening. Vendler, unusually developed and alert for her age, pleads with her mother to explain the mystery of life. I have a sister who has been married for two-and-a-half years. I myself have been made an aunt for the third time and I haven't the least idea how it all comes about. Don't be cross, mother dear. Whom in the world should I ask about you? Don't scold me for asking about it. Give me an answer. What happened? You cannot really deceive yourself that I, who am fourteen years old, still believe in the stalk. Were her mother herself not a victim of false notions of morality, an affectionate and sensible explanation might have saved her daughter, but the conventional mother seeks to hide her moral, shame and embarrassment in this evasive reply. In order to have a child one must love the man to whom one is married. One must love him, Wendler, as you at your age are still unable to love. Now you know it. How much Wendler knew the mother realised too late. The pregnant girl imagines herself ill with dropsy, and when her mother cries in desperation you haven't the dropsy, you have a child girl, the agonised Wendler exclaims in bewilderment. But it's not possible, mother. I'm not married yet. Why didn't you tell me everything? With equal stupidity the boy Morris is driven to suicide because he fails in his school examinations and Melchior, the youthful father of Wendler's unborn child is sent to the house of correction. His early sexual awakening stamping him a degenerate in the eyes of teachers and parents. For years thoughtful men and women in Germany had advocated the compelling necessity of sex enlightenment. Mutter Schutz, a publication specially devoted to frank and intelligent discussion of the sex problem, has been carrying on its agitation for a considerable time, but it remained for the dramatic genius of Vedekin to influence radical thought to the extent of forcing the introduction of sex physiology in many schools of Germany. Scandinavia, like Germany, was advanced through the drama and through any other channel. Long before Ibsen appeared on the scene Bjornsson, the great essayist thundered against the inequalities and injustice prevalent in those countries, but his was a voice in the wilderness, reaching but the few. Not so with Ibsen, his brand, doll's house, pillars of society, ghosts, and an enemy of the people have considerably undermined the old conceptions and replaced them by a modern real view of life. One has but to read brand, to realise the modern conception, let us say, of religion. Religion as an ideal to be achieved on earth. Religion as a principle of human brotherhood, of solidarity and kindness. Ibsen, the supreme hater of all social shams, has torn the veil of hypocrisy from their faces. His greatest onslaught, however, is on the four cardinal points supporting the flimsy network of society. First, the lie upon which rests the life of today. Second, the futility of sacrifice, as preached by our moral codes. Third, petty material consideration, which is the only god the majority worships. And fourth, the deadening influence of provincialism. These far recur as the light motif in Ibsen's plays, but particularly in pillars of society, doll's house, ghosts, and an enemy of the people. Pillars of society. What a tremendous indictment against the social structure that rests on rotten and decayed pillars. Pillars nicely gilded and apparently intact, yet merely hiding their true condition. And what are these pillars? Consul Bernic, at the very height of his social and financial career, the benefactor of his town and the strongest pillar of the community, has reached the summit through the channel of lies, deception and fraud. He has robbed his bosom friend, Johann, of his good name and has betrayed Lona Hessell, the woman he loved, to marry her stepsister for the sake of her money. He has enriched himself by shady transactions under cover of the community's good, and finally even goes to the extent of endangering human life by preparing the Indian girl, a rotten and dangerous vessel, to go to sea. But the return of Lona brings him the realization of the emptiness and meanness of his narrow life. He seeks to placate the waking consciousness by the hope that he has cleared the ground for the better life of his son, of the new generation. But even this last hope soon falls to the ground as he realizes that truth cannot be built on a lie. At the very moment when the whole town is prepared to celebrate the banquet praise, he himself now grown to full spiritual manhood, confesses to the assembled townspeople, I have no right to this homage. My fellow citizens must know me to the core, then let everyone examine himself, and let us realize the prediction that from this event we begin a new time, the old with its tinsel, its hypocrisy, its hollowness, its lying propriety and its pitiful cowardice shall lie behind us like a museum open for instruction. With a doll's house Ibsen has paved the way for woman's emancipation. Nora awakens from her doll's role to the realization of the injustice done her by her father and her husband, Helma Torvald. While I was at home with father he used to tell me all his opinions and I held the same opinions. If I had others I concealed them because he would not have approved. He used to call me his doll-child and play with me as I played with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house. You settled everything according to your taste, and I got the same taste as you, or I pretended to. When I look back on it now I seem to have been living like a beggar from hand to mouth. I lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald. You and father have done me a great wrong. In vain Helma uses the old Philistine arguments, wifely duty, and social obligations. Nora has grown out of her doll's dress into full stature of conscious womanhood. She is determined to think and judge for herself. She has realized that before all else she is a human being owing the first duty to herself. She is undaunted even by the possibility of social ostracism. She has become skeptical of the justice of the law, the wisdom of the constituted. Her rebelling soul rises in protest against the existing. In her own words I must make up my mind which is right, society or I. In her childlike faith in her husband she had hoped for the great miracle, but it was not the disappointed hope that opened her vision to the falsehoods of marriage. It was rather the smug contentment of Helma with a safe lie, one that would remain hidden and not in danger his social standing. When Nora closed behind her the door of her gilded cage and went out into the world a new, regenerated personality she opened the gate of freedom and truth for her own sex and the race to come. More than any other play ghosts has acted like a bomb explosion shaking the social structure to its very foundations. In Doll's House the justification of the union between Nora and Helma rested at least on the husband's conception of integrity and rigid adherence to our social morality. Indeed, he was the conventional ideal husband and devoted father. Not so in ghosts. Mrs. Alving married Captain Alving only to find that he was a physical and mental wreck and that life with him would mean utter degradation and be fatal to possible offspring. In her despair she turned to her youth's husband, young Pastor Manders, who as the true saviour of souls for heaven must need be indifferent to earthly necessities. He sent her back to shame and degradation to her duties to husband and home. Indeed, happiness to him was but the unholy manifestation of a rebellious spirit and a wife's duty was not to judge but to bear with humility the cross which a higher power had for own good laid upon you. Mrs. Alving bore the cross for twenty-six long years. Not for the sake of the higher power, but for her little son Oswald, whom she longed to save from the poisonous atmosphere of her husband's home. It was also for the sake of the beloved son that she supported the lie of his father's goodness in superstitious awe of duty and decency. She learned, alas, too late that the sacrifice of her entire life had been in vain and that her son Oswald was visited by the sins of his father that he was irrevocably doomed. This, too, she learned, that we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what we have learned, what we have inherited from our father and the mother that walks in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas and lifeless old beliefs. They have no vitality but they cling to us all the same and we can't get rid of them. And then we are one and all so pitifully afraid of light. When you forced me under the yoke you called duty and obligation, when you praised as right and proper what my whole soul rebelled against as something loathsome, it was then that I began to look into the seams of your doctrine. I only wished to pick at a single knot, but when I had got that undone the whole thing ravelled out and then I understood that it was a machine-zone. How could a society machine-zone fathom the seething depths whence issued the great masterpiece of Heinrich Ibsen? It could not understand, and therefore it poured the vials of abuse and venom upon its greatest benefactor, that Ibsen was not daunted, he has proved by his reply in an enemy of the people. In that great drama Ibsen performs the last funeral rites over a decaying and dying social system. Out of its ashes rises the regenerated individual, the bold and daring rebel. Dr. Stockman, an idealist full of social sympathy and solidarity, is called to his native town as the physician of the baths. He soon discovers that the latter are built on a swamp, and that instead of finding relief the patients who flock to the place are being poisoned, an honest man of strong convictions, the doctor considers it his duty to make his discovery known. But he soon learns that dividends and profits are concerned neither with health nor principles. Even the reformers of the town represented in the people's messenger always ready to pray to their devotion to the people, withdraw their support from the reckless idealist, the moment they learn that the doctor's discovery may bring the town into disrepute and thus injure their pockets. But Dr. Stockman continues in the faith he entertains for his townsmen. They would hear him, but here too he soon finds himself alone. He cannot even secure a place to proclaim his great truth, and when he finally succeeds, he is overwhelmed by abuse and ridicule as the enemy of the people. The doctor so enthusiastic of his town people's assistance to eradicate the evil is soon driven to a solitary position. The announcement of his discovery would result in a pecuniary loss to the town, and that consideration induces the officials, the good citizens, and soul reformers to stifle the voice of truth. He finds them all a compact majority, unscrupulous enough to be willing to build up the prosperity of the town on a quagmire of lies and fraud. He is accused of trying to ruin the community, but to his mind it does not matter if a lying community is ruined, it must be levelled to the ground. All men who live upon lies must be exterminated like vermin. You'll bring it to such a past that the whole country will deserve to perish. Dr. Stockman is not a practical politician. A free man, he thinks, must not behave like a blaggard. He must not so act that he would spit in his own face, for only cowards permit considerations of pretended general welfare or of party to override truth and ideals. Party programs wring the necks of all young living truths and considerations of expedience he turned morality and righteousness upside down until life is simply hideous. These plays of Ibsen, the pillars of society, a doll's house, ghosts and an enemy of the people constitute a dynamic force which is gradually dissipating the ghosts walking the social burying ground called civilisation. Nay, more, Ibsen's destructive effects are at the same time supremely constructive, for he not merely undermines existing pillars, indeed he builds with sure strokes the foundation of a healthier, ideal future based on the sovereignty of the individual within a sympathetic social environment. England, with her great pioneers of radical thought, the intellectual pilgrims like Godwin, Robert Irwin, Darwin, Spencer, William Morris and scores of others with her wonderful larks of liberty Shelley, Byron, Keats is another example of the influence of dramatic art. Within comparatively a few years the dramatic works of Shaw, Pinero, Galsworthy, Ran Kennedy have carried radical thought to the ears formally deaf even to Great Britain's wondrous poets, thus a public which will remain indifferent by bringing an essay by Robert Owen on poverty or ignore Bernard Shaw's socialistic tracts was made to think by Major Barbara, wherein poverty is described as the greatest crime of Christian civilisation. Poverty makes people weak, slavish, puny, poverty creates disease, crime, prostitution in fine, poverty is responsible for all the ills and evils of the world. Poverty also necessitates dependency charitable organisations institutions that thrive off the very thing they are trying to destroy The Salvation Army, for instance as shown in Major Barbara fights drunkenness, yet one of its greatest contributors is Badger a whiskey distiller who furnishes yearly thousands of pounds to do away with the very source of his wealth. Bernard Shaw therefore concludes that the only real benefactor of society is a man like undershaft Barbara's father, a cannon manufacturer whose theory of life is that powder is stronger than words The worst of crimes says undershaft is poverty All the other crimes are virtues beside it All the other crimes are virtues beside it All the other dishonours are chivalry itself by comparison Poverty blights whole cities spreads horrible pestilences strikes dead the very soul of all who come with insight sound or smell of it What you call crime is nothing a murder here, a theft there a blow now and a curse there What do they matter? They are only the accidents and illnesses of life There are not 50 genuine professional criminals in London but there are millions of poor people abject people, dirty people ill fed, ill clothed people They poison us morally and physically to kill the happiness of society to do away with our own liberties and to organise unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and to drag us down into their abyss Poverty and slavery have stood up for centuries to your sermons and leading articles They will not stand up to my machine guns Don't preach at them Don't reason with them Kill them! It is a final test of conviction The only lever strong enough to overturn a social system Vote! When you vote you only change the name of the cabinet When you shoot you pull down governments inaugurate new epochs, abolish old orders and set up new No wonder people cared little to read Mr. Shaw's socialistic tracts in a no other way but in the drama could he deliver such forcible historic truths and therefore it is only through the drama that Mr. Shaw is a revolutionary factor in the dissemination of radical ideas After Hauptmann's D. Weber Strife by Gaulsworthy is the most important labour drama The theme of strife is a strike with two dominant factors Antony, the president of the company rigid, uncompromising unwilling to make the slightest concession although the men held out for months and are in a condition of semi-salvation and David Roberts an uncompromising revolutionist whose devotion to the working man and to the cause of freedom is at white heat Between them the strikers are worn and weary with the terrible struggle and are harassed and driven by the awful sight of poverty and want in their families The most marvellous and brilliant piece of work in strife is Gaulsworthy's portrayal of the mob its fickleness and lack of backbone One moment they applaud old Thomas who speaks of the power of God and religion and the men against rebellion The next instant they are carried away by a walking delegate who pleads the cause of the union the union that always stands for compromise and which forsakes the working man whenever they dare to strike for independent demands Again they are aglow with the earnestness the spirit and the intensity of David Roberts All these people willing to go in whatever direction the wind blows It is the curse of the working class that they always follow like sheep led to slaughter Consistency is the greatest crime of our commercial age No matter how intense the spirit or how important the man the moment he will not allow himself to be used or sell his principles he is thrown on the dust heap Such was the fate of the president of the company Anthony and of David Roberts To be sure they represented opposite Poles Poles antagonistic to each other Poles divided by a terrible gap that can never be bridged over Yet they shared a common fate Anthony is the embodiment of conservatism, of old ideas of iron methods I have been chairman of this company 32 years I have fought the men four times I have never been defeated It has been said that times have changed If they have, I have not changed with them It has been said that masters and men are equal Kant, there can be only one master in a house It has been said that capital and labour have the same interests Kant, their interests are as wide as Sunder as the Poles There is only one way of treating men with the iron rod Masters are masters Men are men We may not like this adherence to old reactionary notions and yet there is something admirable in the courage and consistency of this man Nor is he half as dangerous to the interests of the oppressed as our sentimental and soft reformers who rob with nine fingers and give liberties with the tenth who grind human beings like Russell Sage and then spend millions of dollars in social research work who turn beautiful young plants into faded old women and then give them a few paltry dollars or found a home for working girls Anthony is a worthy foe and to fight such a foe one must learn to meet him in open battle David Roberts has all the mental and moral attributes of his adversary coupled with the spirit of revolt and the depth of modern ideas he too is consistent and wants nothing for his class short of complete victory It is not for this little moment of time we are fighting not for our own little bodies but for all times oh man for the love of them don't turn up another stone on their heads don't help to blacken the sky if we can shake that white-faced monster with the bloody lips that has sucked the lives out of ourselves our wives and our children since the world began if we have not the hearts of men to stand against it pressed to breast and eye to eye and force it backwards till it cry for mercy it will go on sucking life forever where we are less than the very dogs it is inevitable that compromise and petty interest should pass on and leave two such giants behind inevitable until the mass will reach the statue of a David Roberts will it ever? Prophecy is not the vocation of the dramatist yet the moral lesson is evident one cannot help realising that the working men will have to use methods familiar to them that they will have to discard all those elements in their midst that are forever ready to reconcile the irreconcilable namely capital and labour they will have to learn that characters like David Roberts are the very forces that have revolutionised the world and thus paved the way for emancipation out of the clutches of that white-faced monster with bloody lips towards a brighter horizon a freer life recognition of human values no subject of equal social import has received such extensive consideration within the last few years as the question of prison and punishment hardly any magazine of consequence that has not devoted its columns to the discussion of this vital theme a number of books by able writers both in America and abroad have discussed this topic from the historic, psychological and social stand point all agreeing that present penal institutions and our mode of coping with crime have in every respect proved inadequate as well as wasteful one would expect that something very radical should result from the cumulative literary indictment of the social crimes perpetrated upon the prisoner yet with the exception of a few minor and comparatively insignificant reforms in some of our prisons absolutely nothing has been accomplished but at last this grave social wrong has found dramatic interpretation in Galworthy's justice the play opens in the office of James Howe and Sons Solicitors the senior clerk Robert Cokeson discovers that a check he had issued for nine pounds has been forged to ninety by elimination suspicion falls upon William Falder the junior office clunk the latter is in love with a married woman the abused ill treated wife of a brutal drunkard by his employer a severe yet not unkindly man Falder confesses the forgery bleeding the dire necessity of his sweetheart Ruth Honeywell with whom he had plans to escape to save her from the unbearable brutality of her husband not withstanding the entreaties of young Walter who is touched by modern ideas his father a moral and law respecting citizen turns Falder over to the police the second act in the courtroom shows justice in the very process of manufacture the scene equals in dramatic power and psychologic verity the great court scene in resurrection young Falder a nervous and rather weakly youth of twenty three stands before the bar Ruth his married sweetheart full of love and devotion burns with anxiety to save the young man whose affection brought about his present predicament defended by lawyer from whose speech to the jury is a masterpiece of deep social philosophy wreathed with the tendrils of human understanding and sympathy he does not attempt to dispute the mere fact of Falder having altered the check and though he pleads temporary aberration in defense of his client that please based upon a social consciousness as deep and all embracing as the roots of our social ills the background of life that palpitating life which always lies behind the commission of a crime he shows Falder to have faced the alternative of seeing the beloved woman murdered by her brutal husband whom she cannot divorce or have taken the law into his own hands the defense pleads with the jury not to turn the weak young man into a criminal by condemning him to prison for justice is a machine that when someone has given it a starting push rolls on of itself this young man to be ground to pieces under this machine for an act which at the worst was one of weakness is he to become a member of the luckless crews that man those dark ill-starred ships called prisons? I urge you gentlemen do not ruin this young man for as a result of those four minutes ruin, utter and irretrievable stares him in the face the rolling of the chariot wheels of justice over this boy began when it was decided to prosecute him but the chariot of justice rolls mercilessly on for as the learned judge says the law is what it is a majestic edifice sheltering all of us each stone of which rests on another Falder is sentenced to three years penal servitude in prison the young inexperienced convict soon finds himself the victim of the terrible system the authorities admit that young Falder is mentally and physically in bad shape but nothing can be done in the matter many others are in a similar position and the quarters are inadequate the third scene of the third act is heart gripping in its silent force the whole scene is a pantomime taking place in Falder's prison cell in fast-falling daylight Falder in his stockings is seen standing motionless with his head inclined towards the door listening he moves a little closer to the door his stocking feet making no noise he stops at the door he is trying harder and harder to hear something any little thing that is going on outside he springs suddenly upright as if at a sound and remains perfectly motionless then with a heavy sigh he moves to his work and stands looking at it with his head down he does a stitch or two having the air of a man so lost in sadness that each stitch is as it were a coming to life then turning abruptly he begins pacing his cell moving his head like an animal pacing its cage he stops again at the door listens and putting the palms of his hands against it with his fingers spread out leans his forehead against the iron turning from it presently he moves slowly back towards the window holding his head as if he felt that it were going to burst and stops under the window but since he cannot see out of it he leaves off looking and picking up the lid of one of the tins peers into it as if trying to make a companion of his own face it has grown very nearly dark suddenly the lid falls out of his hand with a clatter the only sound that has broken the silence and he stands staring intently at the wall where the stuff of the shirt is hanging rather white in the darkness he seems to be seeing somebody or something there there is a sharp tap and click the cell light behind the glass screen has been turned up the cell is brightly lighted folder is seen gasping for breath a sound from far away as of distant dull beating on thick metal is suddenly audible folder shrinks back not able to bear this sudden clamour but the sound grows as though some great tumbrill were rolling towards the cell and gradually it seems to hypnotise him he begins creeping inch by inch nearer to the door the banging sound travelling from cell to cell draws closer and closer folder's hands are seen moving as if his spirit had already joined in this beating and the sound swells till it seems to have entered the very cell he suddenly raises his clenched fists panting violently he flings himself at his door and beats on it finally Felder leaves the prison a broken ticket of leave, man the stamp of the convict upon his brow the iron of misery in his soul thanks to Ruth's pleading the firm of James Howe and son is willing to take Felder back in their employ on condition that he give up Ruth it is then that Felder learns the awful news that the woman he loves had been driven by merciless economic molloch to sell herself she tried making skirts cheap things I never made more than ten shillings a week buying my own cotton and working all day I hardly ever got to bed till past twelve and then my employer happened he's happened ever since at this terrible psychological moment the police appear to drag him back to prison for failing to report himself as ticket of leave, man completely overwhelmed by the inexorability of his environment young Felder seeks and finds peace greater than human justice by throwing himself down to death as the detectives are taking him back to prison it would be impossible to estimate the effect produced by this play perhaps some conception can be gained from the very unusual circumstance that it had proved so powerful as to induce the home secretary of Great Britain to undertake extensive prison reforms in England a very encouraging sign this of the influence exerted by the modern drama it is to be hoped that the thundering indictment of Mr. Goldsworthy will not remain without similar effect upon the public sentiment and prison conditions of America at any rate it is certain that no other modern play has borne such direct and immediate fruit in awakening the social conscience another modern play The Servant in the House strikes a vital key in our social life the hero of Mr. Kennedy's masterpiece is Robert a coarse filthy drunkard whom respectable society has repudiated Robert the sewer cleaner is the real hero of the play nay, it's true and only saviour it is he who volunteers to go down into the dangerous sewer so that his comrades can have light and air after all has he not sacrificed his life always so that others may have light and air the thought that labour is the redeemer of social well-being has been cried from the house tops in every tongue and every climb yet the simple words of Robert express the significance of labour and its mission with far greater potency America is still in its dramatic infancy most of the attempts along this line to mirror life have been wretched failures still there are hopeful signs in the attitude of the intelligent public towards modern plays even if they be from foreign soil the only real drama America has so far produced is The Easiest Way by Eugene Walter it is supposed to represent a peculiar phase of New York life if that were all it would be of minor significance that which gives the play its real importance and value lies much deeper it lies first in the fundamental current of our social fabric which drives us all even stronger characters than Laura into The Easiest Way a way so very destructive of integrity, truth and justice secondly the cruel senseless fatalism conditioned in Laura's sex these two features put the universal stamp upon the play and characterise it as one of the strongest dramatic indictments against society the criminal waste of human energy in economic and social conditions drives Laura as it drives the average girl to marry any man for a home or as it drives men to endure the worst indignities for a miserable pittance then there is that other respectable institution the fatalism of Laura's sex the inevitability of that force is summed up in the following words don't you know that we count the life of these men then tamed animals it's a game and if we don't play our cards well we lose woman in the battle with life has but one weapon one commodity sex that alone serves as a trump card in the game of life this blind fatalism has made of woman a parasite an inert thing why then expect perseverance or energy of Laura the easiest way is the path that she has walked out for her from time immemorial she could follow no other a number of other plays could be quoted as characteristic of the growing role of the drama as a disseminator of radical thought suffice to mention the third degree by Charles Klein the fourth estate by Medill Patterson a man's world by Ida Crouchers all pointing to the dawn of dramatic art in America the people the terrible diseases of our social body it has been said of old all roads lead to Rome in paraphrased application to the tenancies of our day it may truly be said that all roads lead to the great social reconstruction the economic awakening of the working man and his realization of the necessity for concerted industrial action the tenancies of modern education in their application to the free development of the child the spirit of growing unrest expressed through and cultivated by art and literature all pave the way to the open road above all the modern drama operating through the double channel of dramatist and interpreter affecting as it does both mind and heart is the strongest force in developing social discontent swelling the powerful tide of unrest that sweeps onward and over the dam of ignorance prejudice and superstition the end of chapter 12 section 2 recorded by Peter Yersley and the end of anarchism and other essays by Emma Goldman