 Chapter 9 of With Her in Our Land. This is a labor box recording. All labor box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit laborbox.org recording by Amelia Chesley. With Her in Our Land by Charlotte Perkins-Gillman. Chapter 9. This is the most fascinating study Elador announced one day. At home we are so smoothly happy, so naturally growing that it's almost unconscious. Here if you have not happiness you have a call on all your sympathy, all your energy, all your pride. You have such a magnificent opportunity. I've gone deeper into my diagnosis to her, she continued, and have even some prescriptions. Be patient while I generalize a little more. You see this case has so many diseases at once that one has to discriminate a bit. Here is the young, new-made country struggling out of the old ones to escape their worst diseases, breaking loose from monarchy, from aristocracy, and feudalism with its hereditary grip on land and money, on body and soul, and most of all from that mind-crushing process of enforced belief which had kept the whole world back so long. Note, she interpolated, it is easy to see that as man progresses in social relation he needs more and more a free, strong, agile mind with sympathetic perception and understanding and the full power of self-chosen action. The enforced belief in any religion claiming to be final truth cripples the mind along precisely those lines, tending to promote a foolish sense of superiority to other believers or disbelievers, running to extremes of persecution, preventing sympathy, perception, and understanding, and reducing action to mere obedience. There, she said cheerfully, if America had done nothing but that, established the freedom of thought and belief, she would have done world service of the highest order. The Greeks allowed it, didn't they? And the Romans, I offered. If they did, it was a lost art afterwards, she replied. Anyhow, you did it later, and you have gone on doing it splendidly. Then, in establishing the beginning of democracy, you performed another great service. This has not progressed as successfully, first because of its only partial application, second because you did not know it needed to be earnestly studied and taught. You thought you had it once and for all just by letting men vote, and third because it has been preyed upon by both parasites and diseases. In the matter of religion, you threw off an evil restriction and let the mind grow free, a natural process. In the matter of government, you established a social process, one requiring the utmost knowledge and skill. So, it is no wonder the result has been so poor. Prescription as to government. A, in franchisement of all adult citizens, you have started on this. B, special training and practice in the simpler methods and principles of democratic government as far as known for all children with higher courses and facilities for experiment and research for special students. You are beginning to do this already. C, careful analysis and reports on the diseases of democracy with applied remedies and as careful study of the parasites affecting it with sharp and thorough treatment. Even this, you are beginning. A little severe on the parasites, aren't you? I asked. It is time you were severe on them then. I'm no Buddhist. I'm a forester. When I see trees attacked by vermin, I exterminate the vermin if I can. My business is to raise wood, fruit, nuts, not insects. Except, of course, when the mulberry tree is sacrificed to the silkworms, I suggested. But she merely smiled at me. You need to transfer to your democracy the devotion you used to have for your kings, if you went on. To kill a common man was murder. To kill a king was regicide. You have got to see that for one man to rob another man is bad enough. For a man to rob the public is worse. But to rob the public through the government is a kind of high treason, which, if you still punished by torture, would be deserving of the most excruciating kind. As it is, you have allowed the practice to become so common that it is scarcely condemned at all. You do not even call it robbery. You call it graft, or pork, or a plum tree, or some such polite term. Of course, I knew all this, but I never had felt it as anything particularly dreadful. Don't you see, she went on. The government is the social motor system. By means of it, society learns, as a baby learns, to check some actions and to make others. If your government is sick, you are paralyzed, weakened, confused, unable to act. In practical instance, your city governments are frequently corrupt from the policeman up. Therefore, when with infinite labor, the public feeling has been aroused to want something done, you find that the machinery to do it with won't work. What you do not seem to realize at all is that the specific evil you seek to attack is not nearly so serious as the generic evil, which makes your whole governmental system so groggy, I suggested, with a wry smile. Yes, that's about it. As weak and slow and wavering as a drunken man. Remedy, I demanded. Remedy? Boy, that comes under a sea and those I just gave, she said. It needs full study and careful experiment to decide on the remedies. But here is what might be done at once. A report be made which should begin with a brief survey of the worst cases of governmental corruption in other countries, past and present. Not only in general, but with specific instances, people called by name with their crimes clearly shown what such and such a person cost his country, how such decisive battles were lost because of such crippling disorders in the government. Parallel made between conspicuous traders already recognized and this kind. Report now brought to our own country with both summary and instances. Our waterways described what has been done legitimately to improve them and what has been done illegitimately to hinder, pervert and prevent right government action. History of our river and harbour bills given and brought down to date with this last huge steal now accomplished and not even rebuked. Names should be given and names called. The congressmen and senators concerned and the beneficiaries in the localities thus nefariously fattened. This kind of thing could be put simply and briefly so that the children could understand. They should be taught early and steadily how to judge the men who corrupt the very vitals of their country. Also how to judge the lazy shirks who do not even vote, much less study how to help the country. It needs, it needs a new kind of public opinion, doesn't it, I've entered. Of course it does, but a new public opinion has to be made. It takes no great genius to recognize a thief and a traitor once he is shown up, but yours are not shown up. Why Elendor, I'm sure there's a lot about this in the papers. She looked at me, just looked at me and her expression was like that of an overripe volcano firmly suppressed. For heaven's sake let it out Elendor, say it quick and say it all, what's the matter with the papers? She laughed. Fortunately she could laugh and I laughed with her. I couldn't say it all under 10 volumes she admitted, but I'll say some of it. This is a special department, I must begin again. This whole matter of societies, parasites and diseases is intensely interesting. We in her land, being normal, have not realized our society much anymore than a healthy child realizes her body. I noticed that Elendor and her sisters always said she and her as unconsciously as we say he and his. Their reason of course is that all the people are she. Our reason is not so justifiable. But the rest of the world seems to be painfully conscious of its social body without being able to help it much. Now you know there are diseases and diseases, some much preferable to others. In their degree of danger they vary much and in what they are dangerous to. One might better have a very sick leg than an even partly sick heart or brain. Rheumatism for instance is painful and crippling, but when it reaches the heart it becomes fatal. Some creatures cannot have certain diseases for lack of material. One does not look for insanity in an angle worm or a neurasthenia in a clam. Society as it has developed new functions has developed new diseases. The daily press is one of the very newest social functions, one of the very highest, one of the most measureless importance. That is why the rheumatism of the press is worse than rheumatism of the farm or the market. Rheumatism of the press. Yes, that's a poor figure perhaps. I mean any serious disease is worse there than in some lower or less important function. Look at the whole thing again Van. Society in the stage of democracy needs to be universally informed, mutually sympathetic, quick and strong to act. For this purpose it must introduce machinery to develop intelligence, to supply information. To arouse an impart feeling, to promote prompt action. The schools are supposed to train the intelligence, but your press is the great machine through which the democracy is informed, aroused and urged to act. It is the social sensorium. Through it you see and hear and feel collectively. Through it you are incited to act collectively. It is later and by that much higher than the school and the church. It is the necessary instrument of democracy. Admitted, all admitted, but isn't that our general belief dear, though perhaps not so clearly put? Yes, you seem to think a great deal of your press so much so that you cannot see much less cure its diseases. Well, you are the doctor. Pitch in. Suppose you know there are many and fierce critics of our sensational press and our renal press. Oh yes, I have read some of the criticisms. They don't touch it. Go on and touch it yourself, sister. I'm listening. She was too serious to be annoyed at my life manner. It's like this, she said slowly. This great new function came into being in a time when people were struggling with what seemed more important issues were perhaps in Europe. It has become very largely a tool of the old governments here fearing that it has been allowed to become the tool of individuals and now of your plutocratic powers. You see, you changed your form of government but failed to change your ideas and feelings to go with it. You allow it to go on over your heads as if it were a monarchy and none of your business. And you jealously refuse to give it certain necessary tools as if it were a monarchy and would misuse them. What you have got to learn is to keep your government the conscious determined action of the majority of the people and see that it has full power. A democracy is self government, the united self of the people. Is that self control the best that self controls the least? Do you want a government owned press, I inquired. We see that in Europe and do not like it. You mean a monarchy controlled press, do you not? No, I do not mean anything like that. You should have a press with democratic control surely and that means all the people or at least the majority of them. What you have now is a press controlled by starkly mercenary motives of individuals and the more powerful purposes of your big interests. What are you going to do? That's what I want to know. Lots of people criticize our press but no one seems able to suggest the better method. Some propose endowment. We must have freedom of expression. You mustn't expect too much of me, man. I can see the disease is easier than the cures of course. It seems to me that you could combine perfect freedom of opinion, comment, idea with the most authoritative presentation of the facts. Do you think a government run paper could be trusted to give the facts correctly? If it did not, there would be heavier charges against it than could be survived over election. What you have not recognized yet is the social crime of misrepresenting the facts. Your papers lie as they please. We have our libel laws. I didn't say libel. I said lie. They lie on whichever side they belong and there is no penalty for it. I laughed as an American would penalty for lying. Who's going to throw the first stone? Exactly. That's the awful part of it, Ben. Your people are so used to public lying that you don't mind. You are paralyzed, benumbed, calloused to certain evils you should be keenly alive to. There are plenty of much less dangerous things you make far more noise about. You see the press is suffering from a marked confusion of function. It makes all its proud claims for freedom and protection as an expression of public opinion, as a medium of information, and then makes its main business the cheapest kind of catering to prejudices and to a market, the market of the widest, lowest popular taste for literary amusement. Why does the palladium of your liberties have to carry those mind-weakening, soul-degenerating comics? They are neither information nor opinion, only bait. The people would not buy the papers if they were not amusing. What people would not? Wouldn't you? Oh, I would, of course. I want to know the news. I mean the lower classes. And these lower classes, so low that they take no interest in the news of the day and have to be given stuff suited to imbeciles, imbeciles with slightly criminal tastes. Are they a large and permanent part of your democracy? You mean that we ought to put out decent papers and see that the people are educated up to them? Why not? I was trying to see why not, but she went on. If your papers were what they ought to be, they could be used in the schools. Should be so used. Every boy and girl in the high school should take the current events course. Each day they should be required to read the brief, clear summary of real news, which would not be a long task, and required to state what seemed to them most important and why. This array of crimes and casualties you print is not news, it is as monotonous as the alphabet. All that needs is a mere list, a bulletin from the sick chamber of society, interesting only to the specialist. But the children should be taught to see the world move every day, to be interested, to feel responsible. People educated like that wouldn't need to be baited with foul stuff to read the papers. For the life of me, I couldn't see anything the matter with this. If we can trust our government with meteorological reports, why not with the social ones? The best brains, the best backing, the whole country watching, she continued. Papers that gave the news, and people who could read them. Then your comment and opinion could be as free as it pleased on the side. Anybody could publish all of that she wanted to. But why should private opinion be saddled on the public facts then? All right, diagnosis accepted with reservations. Romity proposed too suspiciously simple. But go ahead, what else ails us? With every adult enfranchised, the newspaper is reliable. Our natural resources properly protected, developed and improved. Would that do for a starter? Not while half the people do not earn enough to be healthy. I groaned. All right, let's get down to it. Bring on your socialism. Do you want it by evolution or revolution or both? She was not deceived by my mock pathos. What is your prejudice against socialism ban? Why do you always speak as if it were slightly ridiculous? I considered for a moment thoughtfully. I suppose it is on account of my college education and the kind of people I have lived with most, I answered. And what is your own sincere view of it? That had to be considered too. Why, I suppose the theory is right enough, I began. But she stopped me to ask, what is the theory as you see it? Then I was obliged to exhibit my limitations for all I could produce was what I had heard other people say about it. What I could remember of various articles and reviews, mostly adverse, a fruitless excursion into the dogmatic mazes of Marx, and a most unfavorable impression of certain socialist papers and pamphlets I had seen. That's about what I find everywhere, she was good enough to say. That is your idea of it. Now, very honestly, what is your feeling about it? Say it right out, please. So, without waiting to be careful and to see if my feelings bore any relation to my facts, I produced a jumble of popular emotions to the effect that socialism was a lazy man's paradise, that it was an effort of the underdog to get on top, that it was an unfair evening down of the rewards of superior ability with those of the inferior, that it was a class movement full of hatred and injustice, that nobody would be willing to do the dirty work and that such a world wouldn't be worth living in anyhow. Elador laughed merrily both at this nondescript mass of current misconception and at my guilty yet belligerent air as who should say it may be discreditable, but that's the way I feel. She sobered soon enough and looked far past me, through me. It's not you, Van Deere, she said. It's America talking. And America ought to be ashamed of itself, to have so little vision, to be so gullible, to believe so easily what the least study would disprove, to be so afraid of the very principles on which this nation rests. This nation rests on the principle of individual liberty, not on government ownership, I protest in. What individual liberty has the working man, she counted. What choice of profession has his ill-born, ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-taught child? The thing you call free competition is long past, and you never saw it go. You see, ideas stay fixed in people's minds long after the facts have changed. Your industrial world is in a state of what Kent called feudalism, and he was right. It is like Europe under the robber barons, and your struggling trade unions are like the efforts of the escaping serfs in that period. It only takes a little history and economics to see the facts. The perplexing part of the problem to me is the dullness of the popular mind. You Americans are an intelligent people, and a somewhat educated people, but you can't seem to see things. Are we any blinder than other people, my lady? Do they recognize these glaring facts any better than we do? Elador sat still a moment, running over her fresh clear view of the world, past and present. No, she said. No other people is any better, in all ways, except New Zealanders, perhaps. Yet ever so many countries are wiser in some particulars, and you, with all your advantages, haven't sense enough to see it. Oh, I know you'll say the others don't see it either, but you ought to. You are free, and you are able to act when you do see. No, Van, there's no excuse for you. You had supreme advantages. You made a brave start. You established a splendid beginning, and then you sat back and bragged about your ancestors and your resources and your prospects, and let the vermin crawl all over you. Her eyes were grave, her tone solemn, her words most offensive. You look here, Elador. Why will you use that term? It's very disagreeable. What else can you call these people who hang like clusters of leeches on the public treasury, who hop like fleas to escape the law, who spend webby masses of special legislation in which to breed more freely, who creep and crawl on every public work that is undertaken, and flatten undisturbed on all private business? What do you call your sidewalk speculators in theater tickets, for instance, but vermin? Just to steal a ticket and go to see the play would be a clean, manly thing to do compared to this. They are small ones, openly disgusting, yet you do nothing but grumble a little. To turn from little to big, I want to know what you call your sleeping car extortionists. What is the size limit of vermin anyhow? I suppose if a flea was a yard long, he would be a beast of prey, wouldn't he? You certainly are drastic, my dear girl. But what have you got against the sleeping cars? I always thought our service was pretty good. She shook her head slowly regarding me with that motherly patient expression. The resignation of the American public to its devours is like of a sick kitten. You remember that poor little lean thing we picked up and had to drop quick and brush ourselves? Why, Van Jennings, don't you even know you are being robbed to the bone by that sleeping car company? Look here, please. Then she produced one of those neat little sheets of figures I had so learned to respect. Most damaging things, Elador's figures. Twelve double births to a car beside the state room, or rooms which I won't count. Twenty-four passengers who have already bought the ticket on which they are entitled to transportation with accommodations in the day coach. Usual price, $5 for 24 hours. For this $5, the passenger receives by day a whole seat instead of a half one. Unless there is a day crowd and then extra seats are cheerfully sold to other victims. I have seen sleeping cars crowded to standing. By night, he has a place to lie down. Three by three by six with a curtain for privacy. Well, but he is being carried on his journey all the time, I urged. So he is in the day coach or chair car. This money is not for transportation, that's paid for. It is for special accommodation. I am speaking of the kind of accommodation and what is extorted for it. The night arrangements are what you know. Look at the price. Two dollars and a half isn't so much, I urged. But she pursued relentlessly. Wouldn't you think it was much here in this hotel for a space of that size? I looked about me at the comfortable room in the first class hotel where we were then lodged and thought of the preceding night when we had had our two births on the car. Here was a room 12 by 14 by 10. There were two windows. There was a closet and a bathroom. There was every modern convenience in furniture. There was a wide comfortable bed. My room adjoined it equally large and comfortable. This is two dollars for 24 hours, she remarked. That was five dollars. Sleeping cars are expensive to build, I remarked feebly. More expensive than hotels, she asked. The hotel must pay ground rent and taxes. The sleeping cars are not always full, I urged. Neither are the hotels, are they? But the car has to be moved. Yes, and the railroad company pays the sleeping car for being moved, she tried. I wanted to say something about service, tried to, but she made merry over it. They have one conductor for their string of sleepers and as supporters we mostly pay them, you know. I did know, of course. This is how I have figured it, said Elador. Of course I don't know the exact facts about their business and they won't tell, but look at it this way. Suppose they average 20 passengers per car, state rooms and all, at five dollars a day. That's one hundred dollars a day income, 36,500 a year per car. Now they pay the porter about 30 dollars a month, I understand, or less, leaving the public to do the rest. Each car's fraction of the conductor's wages wouldn't be more than 20 dollars, I should think. There's 50 dollars a month, 600 a year for service, and there is laundry work and cleaning, 40 sheets, pillowcases, towels, flat work rates, of course, and renovating at the end of the journey. I don't believe it comes to over, say, 800 dollars a year. Then there is insurance, deprecation, and repairs. Look here, Elador, where did you get up these technicalities? Talking with businessman, I suppose, as usual? Yes, of course, you agreed, and I'm very proud of them. Well, I'll allow 1600 a year for that. That is 3,000 for their running expenses. And remember they are paid something running, I don't know how much. That leaves $33,500. I will magnanimously leave off that $3,500 for times when they carried fewer passengers. Call it a clear income of $30,000 a year. Now that is 10% of $300,000. You don't honestly suppose that one sleeping car costs $300,000, do you, Ann? I did not. I knew better. Anybody knows better. If it costs $100,000 to build and fit a sleeping car she went on calmly, then they could charge about $1.75 for their births and still make money, as you call it. If 10% is a legitimate profit, I call the extra 20% a grinding extortion. What do you call it? Up to date, I never called it anything. I never noticed it. She nodded. Exactly. You people keep quiet and pay three times what it is necessary for the right to live. Your blood sucked night and day in every direction. Now then, if these bloodsuckers are a piece of prey, fight them, conquer them. If they are vermin. Oh, I know you don't like the word, but, Van, what is your estimate of people who are willing to endure vermin? End of Chapter 9. Chapter 10 of With Her in Our Land This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Kay Hand. With Her in Our Land by Charlotte Perkins-Gillman. Going about with Elador among familiar conditions and seeing things I never dreamed were there was always interesting, though sometimes painful. It was like carrying a high-powered light into dark places. As she turned her mind upon this or that feature of American life, it straight away stood out sharply from the surrounding gloom as the moving searchlight of a riverboat brings out the features of the shore. I had known clever women, learned women, even brilliant women, a few, but the learned ones were apt to be a bit heavy. The clever ones twinkled and capered like spangled acrobats, and the brilliant ones shone, indeed like planets among stars, but somehow did not illuminate much. Elador was simple enough, modest enough. She was always keeping in mind how little she knew of our civilization, but what she saw, she saw clearly, and was able to make her hearers see. As I watched her, I began to understand what a special strength it was not to have in one's mind all the associate ideas and emotions ours are so full of. She could take up the color question, for instance, and discuss it dispassionately, with no particular sentiment one way or the other. I heard her once with a southern sociologist, who was particularly strong on what he called race-conflict. He had been reading a paper at some scientific meeting which we attended, a most earnest paper, full of deep feeling and some carefully selected facts. He spoke of the innate laziness of the Negro race, their inborn objection to work, their ineducability—very strong on this—but his deepest horror was miscegenation. This he alluded to in terms of the utmost loathing, hardly mitigated by the statement that it was impossible. There is, he averred, an innate, insuperable, ineradicable universal race antipathy, which forever separates the Negro from the white. Elador had her chance at him afterward, with quite a group about, and he was too polite or insufficiently ingenious to escape. First she asked him what was the market price of a good able bodied Negro before the war, if it was not, as she had read, about a thousand dollars. To this he agreed unsuspectingly. She inquired further if there had not been laws in the slave states forbidding the education of Negroes, and if there were not laws still forbidding their intermarriage with whites. To this he agreed also. He had to. Then she asked whether the sudden emancipation of the Negro had not ruined many rich men, if the major part of the wealth of the South had not been in slaves and the products of their labor. Here again could be no denial. But she said, I do not understand yet. If Negroes cannot, or will not work, why was one worth a thousand dollars? And how could the owners have accumulated wealth from their inefficiency? If they could not learn anything, why was it necessary to make laws forbidding their education, and if there is this insuperable antipathy segregating the races? Why are the laws, I guess, miscegenation in needed? He was quite naturally incensed. There were a good many of his previous hearers about, some of them looking quite pleased, and he insisted rather stormily that there was this deep-seated antipathy, and that every Southerner at least knew it. At what age does it begin, she asked him. He looked at her, not getting the drift of her question. This innate antipathy, she pursued gently. I have seen Southern babies clinging to their Black nurses almost affectionately. At what age does the antipathy begin? He talked a good bit then, with much heat, but did not seem to meet the points she raised, merely reiterating much of what he had said before. Then she went on quite calmly. And your millions of mulattoes. They appear not only against the law, but against this insuperable antipathy. This seemed to him so unwombingly of her, that he made some hasty excuse and got away. But his position was upheld by another man, for a moment. His little speech was mainly emotion. There are such hot depths of feeling on this subject in the children of slave-owners, that clear reasoning is naturally hard to find. This man made a fine little oration, with much about the noble women of the South, and how he or any man would lay down his life to protect them against the faintest danger of social contact with the colored race, against the abomination of a proposal of marriage from a Black man. Do you mean, said Elador, slowly, her luminous eyes on his, that if Black men were free to propose to White women, though White women would accept them? At this, he fairly foamed with horror. A White woman of the South would no sooner marry a Black man than she would a dog. Then why not leave it to the women? she inquired. Neither of these men were affected, save in the way of deep annoyance by Elador's general questions. But many of her hearers were, and she, turning that search-light of hers on the subject, later announced to me that it seemed rather a long, but by no means a difficult problem. About ten million Negroes, counting all the mulattoes, quadrunes, octaroons, and so on, to about ninety million Whites, she said. As a mere matter of interbreeding, following the previous habits of the White men, it could be worked out mathematically, how long it would take to eliminate the Negro, I mean. But suppose there remains a group of Negroes that have race pride and prefer to breed true to the stock, I suggested. What then? If they are decent, orderly, and progressive, there is no problem, surely. It is the degraded Negro that is so feared. The answer to that is easy. Compulsory and efficient education, suitable employment at fair wages, under good conditions. Why, don't you see, dear? She interrupted herself, to say. The proof that it is not impossible is in what has been accomplished already. Here, you White people wickedly brought over the ocean a great lot of reluctant Black ones, and subjected them to several generations of slavery. Yet in those few generations, these previously savage people have made noble progress. She reeled off to me a list of achievements of the Negro race, which I found surprising. Their development in wealth, in industry, in the professions, even the arts was, considering the circumstances, astonishing. All you have to do is improve the cultural conditions to increase the rate of progress. It's no problem at all. You are a wonder, I told her. You come out of that little faraway heaven of yours, and dip into our tangle of horror and foolishness, and as soon as the first shock is over, you proceed to administer these little doses of wisdom, as if a mere pill or two would set the whole world straight. It would, said Elador, if you'd take it. Do you mean that seriously? I demanded. I do. Why not? Why, Van, you've got all the necessary ingredients for peace and happiness. You don't have to wait a thousand years to grow. You're here. It's just a little matter of behaving differently. I laughed. Exactly, my dear, and in her land, so far as I make out, you behave accordingly to your perceptions and decisions. Here, we don't. No, she admitted grudgingly, you don't, not yet. But you could, she persisted triumphantly, you could in a minute if you wanted to. I ducked to this large proposition, and asked her if she had an answer to the Jewish race question as simple as that of the negro. What's the question, she countered. I suppose there's more than one question involved, I answered slowly. But mine would be, why don't people like Jews? I won't be severe with your question, Van, though it's open to criticism. Not all people feel this race prejudice. And I'll tell you, frankly, that this is a bigger widespread. It has deeper roots. I've one than the other. It's older. It's more licked into it, a little. I grinned. Well, you young encyclopedia, what did you discover? I soon discovered that the very general dislike to this one people is not due to the religious difference between them and Christians. It was quite as general and strong, apparently, in very ancient times. Do you think it is a race feeling, then? An insuperable, ineradicable, etc. antipathy? No, she said. There are other Semitic and allied races to whom there is no general objection. I don't think it can be that. I have several explanations to suggest a varying weight. Here's one of them. The Jews are the only surviving modern people that have ever tried to preserve the extremely primitive custom of endogenous marriage. Everywhere else, the exogenous habit proved itself best and was generally accepted. This people is the only one which has always assumed itself to be superior to every other people and tried to prevent intermarriage with them. That's twice you've said tried, I put in. Do you mean that they have not succeeded? Of course they haven't, she replied, cheerfully. When people endeavor to live in defiance of natural law, they are not, as a rule, very successful. But they boast the purity of their race. Yes, I know they do, and other people accept it. But Van Deer, surely you must have noticed the difference between, say, the Spanish and the German Jews, for instance. Social contract will do much in spite of ghettos, but it hardly alters the color of eyes and hair. Well my dear, if it is not religion, nor yet race, what is it? I have two other suggestions. One sociologic, one psychic. The first is this. In the successive steps of social evolution, the Jewish people seem not to have passed the tribal stage. They never made a real nation. Apparently they can't. They live in other nations per force. Why per force, I interrupted. Well, if they don't die, they have to live somewhere in Van. And unless they go and set up a new nation in a previously uninhabited country, or on the graves of the previous inhabitants, they have to live in other nations, don't they? But they were a nation once, I urged. In a way, yes. They had a piece of land to live on, and they lived on it, as tribes, not as one people. According to their own account, 10 out of 12 of these tribes got lost, somehow. And the others didn't seem to mind. No, they could not maintain the stage of social organization, rightly called a nation. Their continuing entity is that of a race, as we see in far lesser instance in gypsies. And the more definitely organized peoples have, not a racial, but a sociological aversion to this alien form of life, which is in them, but not of them. But Elador, do not the modern Jews make good citizens in whatever country they are in? They do, in large measure, wherever they are allowed, she agreed. And both this difference and the old marriage difference would long ago have been outgrown, but for the last one, the psychic one. Do you mean what that writer in Blackwood said about Spain? There seems to be something Spanish in the minds of Spaniards, which causes them to act in a Spanish manner. She laughed, all of that van and a lot more. She stopped, looking away toward the far horizon. I never tire of the marvel and interest of your mixed humanity, she resumed. You see, we were just us. For two thousand years we have been one stock and one sex. It's no wonder we can think, feel, act as one. And it's no wonder you poor things have had such a slow tumultuous time of it. All kinds of races, all kinds of countries, all kinds of conditions, and the male sex to manage everything. Why, van, the wonder is that before this last world quake of a war, you could travel about peaceably almost anywhere I understand. Surely that ought to prove once and for all how safe and quiet the world might be. But about the Jews, I urged at last. Oh yes. Well, dear, as I see it, people are moving on to a wide and full mutual understanding, with peace of course, free trade and social intercourse, and intermarriage, until everyone is what you call civilized. Against this process stood first total ignorance and separation, then opposing interests, then opposing ideas. Today it is ideas that do the most damage. Look at poor Europe. Every interest calls them together, but their different mental content holds them apart. Their egregiously false histories, their patriomanias, their long-nourished hatreds and vengences, oh, it is pathetic. Yes. And the Jews? Oh dear me, van, they're only one people. I get so interested in the world at large that I forget them. Well, what the Jews did was to make their patriomania into a religion. I did not get that, and said so. It was poorly put, she admitted. They couldn't be patriarchs without a fatherland, could they? But it was on the same feeling at a lower stage, applied only to the race. They thought they were the chosen people of God. Didn't other racists think the same thing? Don't they yet? I urged. Oh, in a way they do, some of them, especially since the Jews made a Bible of it. You see, van, the combination was peculiar. The special talent of this race is in literary expression. Other races had their sorrows, but could not utter them. Carthage had no Jeremiah, nor has Armenia. She saw that I was impressed by this point. You have Greece in its sculpture, its architecture, and its objective literature. Even Greek history is a story told by an artist. Description. Rome lives in its roads, I have read, as well as its arts and its power of social organization. Rome, if it could have survived its besetting sins, was a super nation, the beginning of a real world people. Egypt, India, they all have something, but none of them concentrated on literature as the Jews did, having no other social expression. Why, Elador, don't you call their religion anything? Haven't they lifted the world with great religious concepts? She smiled at me, that gentle, warm, steady smile of hers. Forgive an outsider, please. I know that the Christian religion rests on the Jewish books, and that it is hard indeed to see around early teachings. But I have read your Bible carefully, and some little of the latest study and criticism upon it. I think the Christian races have helped the Jews to overestimate their religion. You've never said much about our various religions, my fair foreigner. What do you really think about them? This, she pondered carefully. It's a large subject to try to comment on in a few words. But I can say this, they are certainly improving. I had to laugh. This was such faint praise for our highest institution. How do you measure them, O casual observer? By their effect on the people, of course, naturally each set of believers holds its own to be the all-true, and as naturally that is impossible. But there is enough truth and enough good will in your religions if you would only use them instead of just believing them. And do you not think, especially considering the time of its development, that the Jewish concept of one God, the Jewish ethical ideal, was a long step upward? It was a step, certainly. But Van, they did not think their God was the only one. He was just theirs. A private tribal God openly described as being jealous of the others. And asked of their ethics and the behavior of the people. You have only to read their own books to see how bad it was. Van, no religion can be truly good where the initial doctrines are false or even partly false. That utterly derogatory concept of a God who could curse all humanity because of one man's doing what he knew he would, a God so petty as to pick out one small people for no better reason than that they gave him some recognition and to set his face against all the rest of his equally descended children. Can't you see how unethical, how morally degrading such a religion must be? It was surely better than the others at the time, I insisted. That may be, but the others of that period have mercifully perished. They weren't so literary. Don't you see, by means of their tremendous art, this people have immortalized their race, egotism, and their whole record of religious aspirations, mistakes, and failures in literature. That is what has given them their lasting place in the world. But the effect of this primitive religion immortalized by art and thrust upon the world so long has been far from good. It has well nigh killed Christianity from its cradle. It has been the foundation of most of those hideous old wars and persecutions. With quotations from that Hebrew voice of God, the most awful deeds have been committed and sanctioned. I consider it in many ways a most evil religion. But we have, as you say, accepted it, so it does not account for the general dislike for which you were offering explanations. The last explanation was the psychic one, she went on. What impresses me here is this. The psychic attitude of this people presents to all the other inhabitants of the world a spirit of concentrated pride. It rests first on the tribal animus, with that old endogenous marriage custom, and then on this tremendous literary religious structure. One might imagine generations of Egyptians making their chief education a study of the pyramids, sphinxes, and so on. Were generations of Greeks bringing up their children in the ceaseless contemplation of the Acropolis or the works of their dramatists. But with the Jews, as a matter of fact, we do see century after century of education in their ancient language, in their ancient books, an everlasting study and discussion of what remote dead men have written. This is given a peculiar intensity to the Jewish character, a sort of psychic inbreeding. They have a condensed spirit, more and more so as time passes, and it becomes increasingly inimical to the diffused spirit of modern races. Look at the pale recent imitation of such a spirit given in Germany. They have tried in a generation or two to build up and force upon their people an intense national spirit, with of course the indwelling egotism essential to such an undertaking. Now suppose all German national glory rested on a few sacred books, their own early writings imposed upon the modern world, and suppose that German spirit, even now so offensive to other nations, have been concentrated and transmitted for thousands of years. Do you think people would like them? I was silent a bit. Her suggestions were certainly novel, and in no way resembled what I had heard before, either for or against this peculiar people. What's the answer? I said at last. Is it hopeless? Certainly not. Aren't they born babies with dear little clean free minds? Just as soon as people recognize the evil of filling up new minds with old foolishness, they can make over any race on earth. That won't change race characteristics, will it? No, not the physical ones, she answered. Intermarriage will do that. It looks to me as though your answer to the Jewish question was, leave off being Jews. Is that it? In a measure it is, she said slowly. They are world people and can enrich the world with their splendid traits. They will keep of course their high race qualities, their special talents and virtues, by a chosen, not an enforced selection. Some of the noblest people are Jews, some of the nicest. That can't be denied. But this long, nursed bunch of ancient mistakes, it is high time they dropped it. What is the use of artificially maintaining characteristics which the whole world dislikes, and then complaining of race prejudice? Of course there is race prejudice, a cultural one, and all the rest of you will have to bring up your children without that. It is only the matter of a few generations at most. This was a part of the spirit of her land to which I was slow in becoming accustomed. Their homogeneous, well-ordered life extended its social consciousness freely, ahead as well as backwards. Their past history was common knowledge, and their future development even more commonly discussed. They planned centuries ahead and accomplished what they planned. When I thought of their making over the entire language in the interest of childhood, of their vast field of cultural literature, of such material achievements as their replanting all their forests, I began to see that the greatness of a country is not to be measured by linear space, an extent of land, nor arithmetically by numbers of people, nor shallowly by the achievements of the present, and a few leftovers, but by the scope of its predetermined social advance. As this perception grew within me, it brought first a sense of shame for all the rest of the world, and even more intensely for my own country, which had such incomparable advantages. But after a little, instead of shame, which is utter waste, I began to see life as I had never before, as a great open field of work, in which we were quite free to do as we would. We have always looked at it as a hopeless tangle of individual lives, short, aimless threads, as blindly mixed as the grass stems in a haystack, but collectively as nations, taking sufficient time, there was nothing we could not do. I told her of my new vision, and she was dumbly happy, just held my hand, her eyes shining. That's how to stand the misery and failure, isn't it? I said. That's how not to be discouraged at the awfulness of things, and the reason you take up these separate questions so lightly is that none of them mean much alone. The important thing is to get people to think and act together. There's nothing on earth to hinder them, Van, dear, except what's in their heads, and they can stop putting it in, in the babies, I mean, and can put it out of their own, at least enough to get to work. They are beginning, you know. She spoke most encouragingly, most approvingly, of the special efforts we were making in small groups, whereas individuals, to socialize various industries and functions, but with far more fervor of the great movements. The biggest of all, and closely related, are your women's movement and labor movement. Both seem to be swiftly growing stronger. The most inclusive forward-looking system is socialism, of course. What a splendid vision of immediate possibilities that is. I cannot accustom myself to your not seeing it at once. Of course, the reason is plain. Your minds are full of your ancient mistakes, too. Not so much racial and religious, as in beliefs of economic absurdities. It is so funny. It always netled me a little, to have her laugh at us. That she should be shocked and horrified at the world I had expected. That she should criticize and blame. But to have her act as though all our troubles were easily removable, and we were just a pack of silly fools not to set about it, this was irritating. Well, dear, she pursued pleasantly. Doesn't it look funny to you, like a man sleeping cold with good blankets at the foot of his bed, like Mr. Tantalus, quite able to get what he wanted if he would only reach? If what you said was so, I began. And why isn't it, dear? The trouble is, I think, in your psychology. You, as a free-minded hurlender, cannot seem to see how helpless we are in our minds. All these ages of enforced belief have done something to us, I tell you. We can't change all in a minute. The worst thing that has been done to you is to fill your poor heads with this notion that you cannot help yourselves. Tell me now, what is there to hinder you? You had better be studying as to what does hinder us, I answered, and explain it so that we can do something. We mean well. We are fairly well educated. We are, as you say, rich enough and all that. But we up to date seem unable to get together on any line of concerted action toward better living. I have been studying just that van ever since I first came. Of course, after I saw how things were, that was the only thing to do. Well, I said, and again, well? She sat considering turning over some books and papers that lay on the table beside her. A lovely picture she made. Unique among the women of this land, she had the smooth, rounded freedom of body we see in noble statues, and whatever her new friends tried to make her wear, she insisted upon a dress of such simplicity as did not contradict her natural line to movements. Her face had changed somewhat in our two years of travel and study. There was a sadness in it, such as it never wore in her land, such as I never seen in anyone while here. And for all her quiet courtesy, her gentle patience, her scientific interest and loving kindness, there was a lonely look about her as of some albatross in a poultry yard. To me, she was even more tender and delicately sympathetic than in our first young happiness. She seemed to be infinitely sorry for me, though carefully refraining from expressing it. Our common experiences, our studying and seeing so much together, had drawn us very close, and for my part, I had a curious sense of the growing detachedness from the conditions about me and an overwhelming attachment to her, which transcended every other tie. It seemed as if my love for her as a human being, such love as a brother, a sister, a friend might feel, was now so much greater than my love of her as a woman, my woman, that I could not miss that fulfillment much while so contented in the larger relation. I thought of the many cases I had known where the situation was absolutely reversed, where a man loved a woman solely because of sex desire, without ever knowing her nature as a person, without even wanting to. I was very happy with Elador. To be continued. End of Chapter 10 It was inevitable that my wife should take a large interest in feminism. With that sweeping swiftness of hers, she read a dozen or so of the leading and misleading books on the subject, spent some time in library work looking over files of papers, and talked with all manner of people we met who had views on the matter. Furthermore, she thought about it. As I grew more and more accustomed to seeing Elador think, or at least to seeing the results of that process, I was sharply struck with the lack of thinking among people in general. She smiled sociably when I mentioned it. Why, yes, dear, that is largely what is the matter. You do not train your children to think. You train them not to. Your men think hard in narrow lines. Just little pushing lines of their special work, or how to get richer, and your women. Oh, come, let's have it, I cried despairingly. Whatever else you say or don't say, you are always thinking about the women. I can fairly hear your brain click. And I'll tell you honestly, my dear, that I don't believe you can hurt me now, no matter how hard you hit them, or the men. It certainly has been a liberal education to live with you. Also, I've had my time in her land to show me the difference. I confess that as I now see this life of ours, the women shock me, in some ways more than the men. And I've been doing some reading as well as you, even some thinking. I suppose one thing that has made you so reticent about this is that you can't criticize the women without blaming the men. Perhaps it will encourage you if I begin to do the blaming. She mildly said that perhaps it would seem more magnanimous. So I started in, and found the case worse when stated at length than I had seen it in glimpses. Of course, there is no getting around lest reward, I began slowly. No one can study biology and sociology much, and not see that on the first physiological lines the female is the whole show, so to speak, or at least most of it. And all the way up she holds her own, even into early savagery, till Mr. Man gets into the saddle. How he came to do it is a mystery that I don't believe even you can explain. No, she agreed, I can't. I call it the great divergence. There is no other such catastrophic change in all nature, as far as I've been able to gather. What Ellador had gathered in two years was perhaps not equal in detailed knowledge to the learning of great specialists, but she had a marvelous gift for selecting the really important facts and for arranging them. That was the trick. She did something with what she knew, not merely stored it. Well, he did take the reins somehow, I resumed, and we began our historic period, which is somewhat too large to be covered in an hour, by me. But in all this time, as far as I can make out, he has never been even fair to women, and has, for the most part, treated her with such an assortment of cruelty and injustice as makes me blush for my sex. What made you think so, Van? What first? Why, her land first, I answered promptly, seeing women who were people, and that they were people because they were women, not in spite of it. Seeing that what we had called womanliness was a mere excess of sex, not the essential part of it at all. When I came back here and compared our women with yours, well, it was a blow. Besides, if I'd had no other evidence, you would have shown me, just living with you, my wonder darling. She looked at me with shining eyes, that look that was more than wife, more than mother, the illimitable, loving, human look. What I have learned from you, dearest, from our companionship, without the physical intimacy of sex, is this. That persons, two persons who love each other, have a bigger range of happiness than even two lovers. I mean than two lovers who are not such companions, of course. I do not deny that it has been hard, very hard sometimes. I've been disagreeable to live with. Never, she interpolated. But somehow the more I loved you, the less it troubled me. Now I feel that when we do reach that union, with all our love, with all the great mother purpose that is in your heart, and the beginning of a sense of father purpose in mine, I'm sure that it will be only an incident in our love, our happiness, not the main thing. She gave a long, soft sigh of full content, still listening. All this makes me see the limitations of our women, I continued. And when I look for a reason, there is only the conduct of men toward them. Cruelty? Why, my dear, it is not the physical cruelty to their tender bodies. It is not the shame and grief and denial that they have had to bear. Those are like the atrocities in warfare. It is the war itself which is wrong. The petted women, the contented women, the happy women, these are perhaps the worst result. It's wonderful how clearly you see it, she said. Pretty plain to see, I went on. We men, having all human power in our hands, have used it to warp and check the growth of women. We, by choice and selection, by law and religion, by enforced ignorance, by heavy over-cultivation of sex, have made the kind of woman we so made by nature, that that is what it was to be a woman. Then we heaped our scornful abuse upon her, ages and ages of it, the majority of men in all nations still looking down on women. And then, as if that was not enough, really, my dear, I'm not joking. I'm ashamed, as if I had done it myself. We, in our superior freedom, in our monopoly of education, with the law in our hands, both to make and execute, with every conceivable advantage, we have blamed women for the sins of the world. She interrupted here eagerly. Not all of you, Van Deere. That was only a sort of legend with some people. It was only in the Jewish religion you think so much of that the contemptible lie was actually stated as a holy truth, and even God made to establish that unspeakable injustice. Yes, that's true, but nobody objected. We all accepted it gladly, and treated her accordingly. Well, sister, have I owned up enough? I guess you can't hurt my feelings any with anything you say about men. Of course, I'm not going into details, that would take forever. But just in general I can see what ails the women, and who's to blame for it. Don't be too hard on Mr. Man, she urged gently. What you say is true enough, but so are other things. What puzzles me most is not at all that background of explanation. But what ails the women now? Here, even here in America, now. They have had some education for several generations. Numbers of them have time to think, some few have money. I cannot be reconciled to the women, Van. She was so unusually fierce about it that I was quite surprised at her. I had supposed that her hardest feeling would be about men. She saw my astonishment and explained. Put yourself in my place for a moment, Van. Suppose in her land we had a lot of subject men. Blame us all you want to for doing it, but look at the men. Little creatures, undersized and generally feeble, toweredly and not ashamed of it. Kept for sex purposes only, or as servants, or both, usually both. I confess I'm asking something difficult of your imagination. But try to think of her land women, each with a soft man she kept to cook for her, to wait upon her, and to love when she pleased. Ignorant men, mostly. Poor men, almost all, having to ask their owners for money and tell what they wanted it for. Some of them utterly degraded creatures, kept in houses for common use, as women are kept here. Some of them quite gay and happy, pet men with pet names and presents showered upon them. Most of them contented, piously accepting kitchen work as their duty, living by the religion and laws and customs the women made. Some of them left out and made fun of for being left, not owned at all, and envying those who were. Allow for a surprising percentage of mutual love and happiness even under these conditions, but also for ghastly depths of misery and a general low level of mere submission to the inevitable. Then, in this state of degradation, fancy these men for the most part quite content to make monkeys of themselves by wearing the most ridiculous clothes. Fancy them, men, with men's bodies, though enfeebled, wearing open work lace under-clothing, with little ribbons all strung through it, wearing dresses never twice alike and almost always foolish, wearing hats, she fixed me with a steady eye in which a growing laughter twinkled, wearing such hats as your women wear. At this I threw up my hands. I can't, I said. It's all off. I followed you with increasing difficulty, even through the lace and baby ribbon. But I stopped there. Men wear such hats. Men, I tell you, it is unthinkable. Unthinkable for such men? Such men are unthinkable, really. Contemptable, skulking, cowardly spaniels. They would deserve all they got. Why aren't you blaming the women of her land for treating them so, Van? Oh, said I. And—yes, said I. I begin to see, my dear hurlander, why you're down on the women. Good, she agreed. It's all true what you say about the men. Nothing could be blacker than that story. But the women, Van, the women. They are not dead. They are here, and in your country they have plenty of chance to grow. How can they bear their position, Van? How can they stand it another day? Don't they know they are women? No, said I slowly. They think they are—women. We both laughed, rather sadly. Presently she said, We have to take the facts as we find them. Emotion does not help us any. It's no use being horrified at a hermit crab. That's the way he is. This is the woman, man-made. How is she going to get over it? You don't forget the ones who have gotten over it, do you? And all the splendid work they are doing? I'm afraid I did for a moment, she admitted. Besides, so much of their effort is along sidelines, and some of it in precisely the wrong direction. What would you have them do? What would you have those inconceivable men of her land do? she countered. What would you say to them? To rouse them? I'd try to make them realize that they were men, I said. That's the first thing. Exactly. And if the smooth, plump, crazily dressed creatures answered, a true man is always glad to be supported by the woman he loves, what would you say to that? I should try to make him realize what the world really was, I answered slowly, and to see what was a man's place in it. And if he answered you, a hundred million strong, a man's place is in the home. What would you say then? It would be pretty hard to say anything, if men were like that. Yes, and it is pretty hard to say anything when women are like that. It doesn't reach them. But there is the whole women's movement. Surely they are changing, improving. She shook off her mood of transient bitterness. My ignorance makes me hard, I suppose. I'm not familiar enough with your past history, recent past history, I mean, to note the changes as clearly as you do. I come suddenly to see them as they are, not knowing how much worse it has been. For instance, I suppose women used to dress more foolishly than they do now. Can that be possible? I ran over in my mind some of the eccentricities of fashion in earlier periods, and was about to say that it was possible when I chanced to look out of the window. It was a hot day, most oppressively hot, with a fiercely glaring sun. A woman stood just across the street, talking to a man. I picked up my opera-glass and studied her for a moment. I had read that the small waste is coming in again. Hers had come. She stood awkwardly in extremely high-heeled slippers in which the sole of the foot leaned on a steep slant from heel to ball, and her toes, poor things, were driven into the narrow pointed toe of the slipper by the whole sliding weight of the body above. The thin silk hose showed the insteps puffing up like a pin cushion from the binding grip of that short vamp. Her skirts were short as a child's, most voluminous and varied in outline, hanging in bunches on the hips and in various fluctuating points and corners below. The bodice was a party-colored composition of indiscreet exposures, more suitable for a ballroom than for the street. But what struck me most was that she wore about her neck a dead fox or the hole outside of one. No, she was not a lunatic. No, that man was not her keeper. No, it was not a punishment, not an initiation penalty, not an election bet. That woman, of her own free will, and at considerable expense, wore heavy furs in the hottest summer weather. I laid down the glass and turned to Alador. No, my dear, said I gloomily. It is not possible that women ever could have been more idiotic in dress than that. We were silent for a little, watching that pitiful object with her complacent smile as she stood there on those distorted feet, sweating under her load of fur, perfectly contented and pleased with herself. Someway, said Alador slowly, it makes me almost discouraged about the woman's movement. I'm not, of course, not really. I do know enough to see that they are far better off than a hundred years ago, and the laws of life are on their side, solid, irresistible laws. They are women, after all, and women are people. Are the people, really, up to a certain point? I must make more allowances, must learn to see the gain in some ways, even where there is none in others. Now that, that tottering little image may be earning her own living or doing something useful. What's worst of all, perhaps, is the strange missing of purpose in those who are most actively engaged in advancing. They seem like flies behind a window. They bump and buzz, pushing their heads against whatever is in front of them, and never seem really to plan a way out. No, there's one thing worse than that, much worse. I wouldn't have believed it possible. I can hardly believe it now. What's this horror, I asked? Prostitution? White slavery? Oh no, she said, those things are awful, but a sort of natural awfulness, if I may say so. What a scientific observer would expect of the evil conditions carried to excess. No, this thing is unnatural. I mean, the anti's. Oh, the anti-suffragists? Yes. Think of the men again, those poor, degraded men I was imagining, and then think of some of them struggling for freedom, struggling long and hard, with pathetically slow progress, doing no harm in the meantime, just talking, arguing, pleading, petitioning, using what small money they could scrape together to promote their splendid cause, their cause that meant not only their own advantage, but more freedom and swifter progress for all the world. And then think of some other of those pet men, not only misunderstanding the whole thing, too dull or too perverse even to see such basic truth as that, but actually banding together to oppose it. Van, if you want one all-sufficient and world-convincing proof of the degradation of women, you have it in the anti-suffragist. The men are backing them, remember, I suggested. Of course they are. You expect the men to oppose the freeing of women, they naturally would. But the women, Van, the women themselves, it's unnatural. With a sick shutter she buried her face in her hands for a moment, then straightened up bravely again, giving that patient little sigh of dismissal to the subject. I was silent, and watched her as she sat, so strong, so graceful, so beautiful, with that balanced connection in line and movement we usually see only in savages. Her robe was simple in form, lovely in color, comfortable and becoming. I looked at her with unfailing pleasure always, never having to make excuses and reservations. All of her was beautiful and strong. And I thought of her sisters, that fair land of full-grown women, all of whom, with room for wide personal distinction, were beautiful and strong. There were differences enough. A group of thoroughbred race horses might very widely, in color, size, shape, marking, and individual expression. Yet all be fine horses. There would be no need of scrubs and cripples to make variety. And I looked again out of our window at the city street, with its dim dirtiness, its brutal noise, and the unsatisfied, unsatisfying people going so hurriedly about after their food, crowding, pushing, hurrying like hungry rats, the sordid eagerness of the men, the shallow folly of the women. And all at once there swept over me a great wave of homesickness for her land. Elador was never satisfied merely to criticize. She must needs plan some way out, some improvement. So, laying aside her discouragement, she plunged into this woman-question with new determination, and before long came to me in loving triumph. I was wrong, Van, to be so harsh with them. It was just my her land background. Now I have been deliberately putting myself in the woman's place, and measuring the rate of progress, as of a glacier. And it's wonderful, really wonderful. There was the bottom limit, not so very far back, some savages still keeping to it, merely to live long enough to bear a daughter. Then there's the gain, this way in one land, and that way in another, but always again. Then this great, modern awakening, which is now stirring them all over the world. By keeping my own previous knowledge of women entirely out of my mind, and by measuring your really progressive ones today against their own grandmothers, that movement I was so scornful about now seems to me a sunburst of blazing improvement. Of course they bump and buzz in every direction. That is mere resilience. Haven't they been kept down in every direction? They'll get over that as they grow accustomed to real liberty. It would be inconceivable that they should have been so unutterably degraded for so long, and not show the results of it, the limitations. Instead of blaming them, I should have been rejoicing at the wonderful speed with which they have surged forward, as fast as any door was opened, even a crack. I have been looking at what might be called the unconscious as apart from the conscious woman's movement, and it comforts me much. Just what do you mean? I mean the women's clubs, here in this country especially, and largest of all the economic changes, the immense numbers who are at work. Didn't they always work, the poor ones, that is? Oh yes, at home. I mean human work. Wage earning? That, incidentally, as a descriptive term, but it would be different grade of work, even without that. So I've heard people say, some people, but what is their superior in doing some fractional monotonous little job like bookkeeping, for instance, as compared with the management and performance of all the intimate tasks in a household. I was so solemn about this that she took me seriously, at least for a moment. It isn't the difference between a bookkeeper and a housekeeper that must be considered. It is the difference between an organized business world that needs bookkeeping, and an unorganized world of separate families with no higher work than to eat, sleep, and keep alive. Then she saw me grin and begged pardon cheerfully. I might have known you were wiser than that, Van. But, oh, the people I've been talking to, the questions they ask and the comments they make. Fortunately, we do not have to wait for universal conviction before moving onward. If you could have your way with the women of this country and the others, what would you make them do, I asked. She set her chin in her hand and meditated a little. What they are doing, only more of it, for one thing, she answered presently. But, oh, so much more. Of course they have to be taught differently. They need new standards, new hopes, new ideals, new purposes. That's the real field of work, you see, Van, in the mind. That is what was so confusing to me at first. You see, the difference in looks between your women and our women is as one to a thousand compared to the differences between their mental content. Your conditions are so good. The real ones, I mean. The supplies, the materials, the abilities you have, that at first I underrated the difficulties. Inside, you are not as advanced as outside, men or women. You have such antique minds. I never get used to it. You see, we, ever so long ago, caught up with our conditions, and now we are always planning better ones. Our minds are ahead of our conditions, and yet we live pretty comfortably. And how are our women going to catch up? They have to make a long jump, from the patriarchal status to the democratic, from the narrowest personal ties to the widest social relation, from first-hand labor, mere private service of bodily needs, to the specialized, organized social service of the whole community. At present this is going on, in actual fact, without their realizing it, without their understanding and accepting it. It is the mind that needs changing. I suppose it seems a trifling matter to you to change the working machinery of twenty million homes. That's what it amounts to, doesn't it? How long does it take to do up twenty million women's hair, she inquired? No longer than it does one, if they all do it at once. Numbers don't complicate a question like this. What could be done in one tiny village could be done all over the country in the same time. I suppose I do underestimate the practical difficulties here, on account of our having settled all those little problems. The idea of your still not being properly fed, I can't get used to it. Then I remembered the uniform excellence of food in her land. Not only all that we ourselves had enjoyed, but that I never saw in any shop or market any wilted, withered, stale, or in any way inferior supplies. How did you manage that, I asked her. Did you confiscate all the damaged things? Was there a penalty for selling them? Does one of your housekeepers confiscate her damaged food? Is there any penalty for feeding her family with it? Oh, I see. You only provided enough to keep fresh. Exactly. I tell you, numbers don't make any difference. A million people do not eat any more, a piece, than a dozen at one table. We feed our people as carefully and as competently as you try to feed your families. You can't do as well because of the inferiority of materials. This I found somewhat offensive, but I knew it was true. It's so simple, she said wearily. A child could see it. Food is to eat, and if it is not good to eat, it is not food. Here you people use food as a thing to play with, to buy and sell, to store up, to throw away, with no more regard for its real purpose than the swine with pearls before him, I suggested. But you know those economic laws come in. She laughed outright. Van, dear, there is nothing in all your pitiful, tangled life more absurd than what you so solemnly call economics. Good economics in regard to food is surely this—to produce the best quality in sufficient quantity, with the least expenditure of labor, and to distribute it the most rapidly and freshly to the people who need it. The management of food in your world is perhaps the most inexplicably foolish of anything you do. I've been up and down the streets in your cities observing. I've been in the hotels and restaurants far and wide, and in ever so many homes. And I confess, Van, with some mortification, that there is no one thing I'm more homesick for than food. I am getting discouraged, if you are not, Elador. As compared with a rational country like yours, this is rather a mess, and it looks so hopeless. I suppose it will take a thousand years to catch up. You could do it in three generations, she calmly replied. Three generations? That's barely a century. I know it. The whole outside part of it you could do inside of twenty years. It is the people who will take three generations to remake. You could improve this stock, say, five percent in one, fifteen in two, and eighty percent in three, perhaps faster. Are not you rather sanguine, my dear girl? I don't think so, she answered gravely. People are not bad now. They are only weighed down with all this falsehood and foolishness in their heads. There is always the big lifting force of life to push you on as fast as you will let it. There is the wide surrounding help of conditions, such conditions as you even now know how to arrange. And there is the power of education, which you have hardly tried. With these altogether, and with proper care and breeding, you could fill the world with glorious people soon. Oh, I wish you'd do it. I wish you'd do it. It was hard on her. Harder even than I had foreseen. Not only the war horrors, not only the miseries of more backward nations, and of our painful past, but even in my America, where I had fondly thought she would be happy, the common arrangements of our lives, to which we are so patiently accustomed, were to her a constant annoyance and distress. Through her eyes I saw it newly, and instead of the breezy pride I used to feel in my young nation, I now began to get an unceasing sense of what she had called an idiot child. It was so simply true what she said about food. Food is to eat. All it's transporting and preserving and storing and selling, if it interferes with the eating value of the food, is foolishness. I began to see the man who stores eggs until they are reduced to the grade called wroughts and spots as an idiot and a malicious idiot at that. Vivid and clear rose in my mind the garden-circled cities of Herland, where for each group of inhabitants all fresh fruits and vegetables were raised so near that they could be eaten the day they were picked. It did not cost any more. It cost less saving transportation. Supplies they would keep they kept, enough from season to season with some emergency reserves. But not one person, young or old, ever had to eat such things as we pay extortionately for in every city. Nothing but women, only mothers, but they had worked out to smooth perfection what now began to seem to me to be the basic problem in human life, how to make the best kind of people and how to keep them at their best and growing better. Surely that is what we are here for.